XIAO. For the three thousand years of China's recorded history, xiao (filial piety) has been the cornerstone of Chinese religious, social, and ethical life. According to China's oldest dictionary, xiao simply means "to serve one's parents well." This concept's unchanging spirit has been that one surrenders pleasures and even necessities to ensure the happiness of one's parents. Within the family, this moral value has subordinated the young to the old and the individual to the collective. Since Confucianism maintained that the ruler-subject relationship was merely an extension of that between parent and child, within the larger community, xiao has produced loyal and obedient citizens. Due to its overwhelming importance, each of China's great religious traditions—Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism—appropriated and popularized its understanding of it. Moreover, xiao's appeal extended well beyond China to all of East Asia.

Although long a salient feature of Chinese society, xiao...