When children fail in such duty...

When children fail in such duty, parents who cannot work or have difficulty with their living have a right to demand alimony from their children.(11) Obviously, taking respectful care of one's aged parents is one of the most important moral duties of an adult child in Confucian China as well as in all East Asian societies.

However, when we compare the arguments used by the western liberals and those used by Confucians on this issue, we may find that their arguments are grounded in different concept of justice. The Confucian concept of justice is called*"yi,"* which is also translated as righteousness. Traditionally, Confucians defined the meaning of*"yi"* from the interactive relations between my "personal self" (wo) and my surrounding social, historical, and natural communities (qun).

For example, Dong Zhong Shu (c.179 - c.104 B.C.E.), the most famous Confucian scholar in the Han Dynasty, defined*"yi"* as follows: Yi means yi* (appropriation) to one's own person. Only once one is appropriate to his own person can this be called yi (righteousness). Thus, the expression yi combines the notions of "appropriateness" (yi*) and "personal self" (wo ) in one term. If we hold on to this insight, yi as an expression refers to personal self.

Thus it is said that to realize yi in one's actions is called attaining it in oneself (zi de); to neglect yi in one's actions is called self-negligence (zi shi).(12) According to Dong and other Confucians during the time, yi should be defined in term of its homophone, yi* , which means "right, proper, appropriate, suitable." In both classical and modern Chinese, the word yi* refers often to one's making oneself over to become appropriate to one's surrounding environments, e.g., one's familial, social, and natural communities.

It refers also to making one's surrounding environments appropriate for one's self-attainment or self-accomplishment.