Humans are built not on logic, but on human nature and interests.

Respect human nature and respect self-interest, because together they account for over 95% of what drives people. Principles, in comparison, make up less than 5%.

Human nature always includes degrees of closeness and distance—people can't live by principles alone.

A person is at their happiest when they align principles, human nature, and self-interest into one unified purpose.

For someone capable and ambitious, the first move is usually a bribe: an invitation to sit down and share a meal. In Chinese culture, the dinner gathering isn't really about food—it's about trying to establish shared interests.

In primitive tribes, sharing a meal was the highest form of interest. When everyone sat together and divided the spoils of the hunt—when you ate and I ate—that was the foundation of cooperation.

If everyone ate and you refused, that sent a clear signal. Everyone understood the message.

You were not willing to ride in the same boat as the rest.

So refusing a meal is an art. Sometimes it's a statement of position, a way of making your stance known. Other times, you refuse simply because there are too many dinners and you must choose. That kind of refusal isn't necessarily opposition—it's neutrality.

Sometimes declining a meal is casting a vote against. Other times it's abstaining.

You can't share interests with every team at once. If you eat Liu Bei's rice and then Cao Cao's, you'll have to navigate the conflict between their camps. An explicit refusal is a statement of position. A non-explicit refusal is a way of saying, "Let's wait and see."

On the receiving end, the other party will also take one of two attitudes. The first is neutrality: whether you rejected them outright or are just keeping your options open, they'll treat it as a postponement—"let's table it for now and talk later." The second is a threat.

A threat is still an attempt to bring you in. When bribery fails and kindness is spurned, it's seen as hostility.

If you're unwilling to increase your own interests, be prepared to suffer losses instead.