A central source of conflict in The Family Chao is the question of familial loyalty and obligation—what is owed to family members, especially a parent, when a bond of blood has not been supportive or nurturing. All those around Leo Chao wrestle in different ways with what they owe him as a father, husband, and member of the Chinese community—struggles that in turn raise questions of what they owe to each other.

One way the notion of family loyalty has shaped each of the Chao brothers is their relationship to the restaurant, where Leo demanded they work as children and where Dagou now works as an adult. From James’s perspective, familial loyalty is something leveraged by Leo to manipulate them into doing his will, and James ponders “how this idea of family love—this hierarchy of responsibility and of obedience—has helped to create Big Leo’s kingdom” (100). James, like his brothers, feels “he will always struggle against his family’s shadows” (219), reinforcing the idea that the fraught nature of the Chao’s family dynamic causes them to view familial loyalty as a burden rather than a blessing.

The novel positions Leo himself as a malevolent ruler of this kingdom.