Loyalty In Ancient China

Loyalty is applicable for the social class to which most of Confucius' students held by, and still do throughout history because the most important way for an aspiring young scholar to become an important official was to enter a ruler's civil service through loyalty, loyalty is identical to filial piety, and loyalty defines one's moral commitments as being honest and reliable to one's surrounding social, cultural, and historical community as a whole.
In later ages, emphasis of loyalty was often placed more on the obligations of the ruled to the ruler, and less on the ruler's obligations to the ruled. Like filial piety, loyalty was often subverted by the autocratic regimes in China. Nonetheless, throughout the ages, many Confucians continued to fight against unrighteous superiors and rulers. Many of these Confucians suffered and sometimes died because of their conviction and action. During the Ming-Qing era, prominent Confucians such as Wang Yangming promoted individuality and independent thinking as a counterweight to subservience to authority. The famous thinker Huang Zongxi also strongly criticized the autocratic nature of the imperial system
Confucius had advocated a sensitivity of the class relations that existed in his time; although, he did not propose that might makes right, but a superior who had received the Mandate of Heaven should be obeyed because of his moral rectitude. Filial piety or filial devotion is considered among the greatest of virtues and must be shown towards both the living and the dead. The term "filial", meaning "of a child", denotes the respect and obedience that a child, originally a son, should show to his parents, especially to his father. In addition, this relationship was extended by analogy to a series of five relationships or five cardinal