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Abstract On the issue of gift-giving, renqing and intersubjective relationship, Fei Xiaotong’s chaxu geju (differential mode of association), a 75-year long dialogue among scholars (1939-2013), involving anthropology, sociology, psychology and communication, has brought a new Chinese theory of interpersonal communication to the surface. However, it is within a stone’s throw of the final theory generation due to the tension and contradiction between their dialogues, and its vague relevance to communication. The paper follows Peters and Carey in their problem consciousness and method of argumentative conversations, reorganizes the dialogues, and finally integrates into a new theory, setting the story of Liu Laolao’s Six Visits to Daguanyuan as an empirical background. The new dialogue thus resolves disagreements in three ways. The first one is “judging the guanxi”. Fei’s concept of Chaxu geju focuses on the features of kin and non-kin relations, in which the proximity of kinship and friendship is determined by one’s own lineage, while Huang Guangguo is more concerned with expressive tie, mixed tie and instrumental tie, but its explanatory power is limited to non-kin relations. The second one is “the balance of giving and repaying”, which is derived from the Confucian concept of “reciprocity as a social norm” (Lishang-wanglai), equivalent to the universal principle of “reciprocity” in human communication, but for Chinese it is the basic premise, and the higher law is renqing, the moral obligation. The third one is renqing. The disagreements mainly centre around the differences between “giving renqing/returning renqing” and “sending renqing gifts”, the former aiming at reciprocal “Lishang-wanglai” (礼尚往来), including “presenting a gift and seeking guanxi” in extreme cases, while the latter pointing at “differential reciprocity”, practicing gift exchanging (Li Shang Wang Lai, 礼上往来) as a social norm, and also the key indicator of “closeness and distance”, involving the ritualized gift exchange. From “reciprocity as a social norm” (Lishang-wanglai) to “gift-giving as a social norm” (Li Shang Wang Lai), the question of “how society is possible” turns to a problem in communication studies. On the one hand, renqing, which is embodied as Chinese “cultural design”, revises the universal principle of reciprocity “into the specific principle of differential reciprocity”, with a moral obligation to maintain long-term kinship. On the other hand, renqing also corresponds to a set of “semantic device”, which not only makes contacts, exchanges and gift-giving a symbolic process to present and confirm the significance, but also organizes symbolic forms, meaning production and physical commodity exchange into a set of social practices. Hence, as commonplace as “relatives” may seem, they imply the miracle of social life, that a family, lineage and society can be established even without expressive or instrumental reciprocity.
Finally, the paper integrates both Kwang-kuo Hwang’s and Yan Yunxiang’s theories into a new model of Chinese interpersonal communication. The three components of renqing, emotional attachment, rational calculation and moral obligation, form a dynamic meaningful structure, by which the medium function of gifts-giving and the nature of intersubjective relationship are defined. From the motivation of personal interaction, emotional attachment (expressive) and rational calculation (instrumental) reflect the universal principle of reciprocity, which helps to construct and maintain short-term relationships. Starting from the norms of social communication, moral obligation symbolizes the cultural design of reciprocity, which is helpful in constructing and maintaining long-term relationships.
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