This idea is not commonly expressed in English as far as I know.

Possibly Machiavellian.

England and I'd guess the States still claim to be nations whose legal systems are based on Christian principles. 'Cheat if you think you can get away with it' cuts right across the Christian ethos (and, from my knowledge of Moslems, Hindus, and Jews – I'm sorry I don't know any adherents to other religions, or -isms – that of almost all other major religious etc groupings, I'm glad to say) and so would not be expected to be a major mantra in society at large. In novels, Archer posits, in a tongue-in-cheek (I hope) way, what he calls the 'Eleventh Commandment' – 'Don't get caught!'

If you mean Jeffrey Archer, he famously did get caught.

Christianity doesn't have a monopoly on sayings in English.

@Mitch Sayings reflect culture, and the culture in most English-speaking countries has a Judeo-Christian heritage, so there's correlation.

That such a saying is an idiom in China, and that, as @EdwinAshworth remarks, neither AmE nor BrE have a common equivalent, is a matter of historical development across the past two thousand years.

I believe this is captured by the concept of "fiduciary responsibility" in business.

More common in English are sayings like "Honesty is the best policy" and “This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." (Shakespeare)

I notice that you've posted this same question in several language SEs (they're all getting onto the HQL). I'm just curious why you need to translate this into several different languages.

@NigelJ There's a remarkable degree of stereotyping going on in this thread. There are thousands of idioms in Chinese, all of them are four syllables long (and hence sound very blunt when translated literally), and I've never personally heard this one.

Yet from just four syllables you're ready to conclude that this idiom applies as widely as a naive translation would make you think (which is generally a very poor idea with idioms) and also that it's "common"? While @Barmar is ready to take it as a referendum on an entire culture?

Quite frankly, I expected better reasoning skills all around. But then again, I am usually disappointed when I land on this site from the HNQ.

@knzhou I think you're reading way too much into these comments. Questions like this come up all the time, and frequently idioms don't translate simply because there are no equivalent cultural references. E.g. I think Americans adopted "saving face" from the Japanese because we didn't experience similar levels of shame in a way that prompted us to come up with our own idiom.

Language and culture are inextricably entwined.

@Barmar All these comments are reading way too much into four syllables. If you gave me an hour I could write down hundreds of examples in English that nobody uses, which sound even worse out of context.

It's not the 4 syllables, it's the sentiment they describe.

@Barmar How do you know anything about how often this idiom is actually used and in what contexts it's actually used? Can you imagine how accurate non-native English speakers would be trying to do the same for English idioms (say, "bite the bullet", "white elephant", "scot-free", "son of a gun"...)?

What did I write that indicted a whole culture? All I did was support someone's point that English sayings are more likely to reflect our Judeo-Christian heritage. Conversely, I'll bet the Chinese have lots of sayings that come from Buddhism and Confucius.

@Barmar I suppose you're right. It's just as if I were to reply to a question about the common English saying "there's a sucker born every minute" by sagely intoning that English sayings reflect English-speaking culture.

@knzhou : I heard and read a lot about this particular idiom. And you can do your own Google research about this idiom.

@Barmar : I am writing an essay for my classes at my university. The topic was chosen by myself and is related to this proverb, but is more broad. Equivalents of this Chinese proverb in various European languages add valuable material to the essay. I find the topic of the essay quite interesting, and I learn a lot about languages and cultures by collecting material for the essay.

This is not an idiom in Chinese. It is how this idea expressed literally. It happens to have 4 characters like most of the idioms. You may replace 骗 with any verb to mean to do that as long as you can. Or you may use X就Y to mean Y as long as X.

Looks like you want this expression in every language. Could you reference some sources where did you "read a lot" about it? I feel it like someone criticizing a group of scammers or the like: "their slogan is X", mistranslated as something like "their best respected idiom is X".

BTW, mentioned here youtu.be/5ncOyYzOP3w?t=5m40s

Win-at-all-costs mentality. Technically, it's not cheating if one prospers from it; that's called winning.

@user23013 : It is not true that I want this expression in every language. I asked my question only on the English, Russian, and German SE.

@user23013 : This Chinese phrase is an idiom. I even asked one Chinese and one Taiwanese via Facebook, and they confirmed it is an idiom. You can also do research in Google. If you do not read Chinese, just type "Néng piàn jiù piàn" in Google.

So, your source is "somewhere", but also confirmed by two friends on Facebook? (No offend, but not everybody is a linguist, or would assumes others are using the right terms.) Googling this term in double quotes gives 224,000 results. First two are your posts. The 3rd asks what it means, without implying it's an idiom. The 4th is a Chinese post that claims a racist westerner professor introduces this term in a lecture. And I consider this not significantly more than the similar phrases "能坑就坑" 50,000 "能蒙就蒙" 90,300. Googling the pinyin in double quotes gives only 66 results.

I hope these results are not localized for me. I'm asking because, you know, if I simply say it doesn't exist in a few idiom dictionaries (google 成语词典 in Chinese), it doesn't sound convincing.

Googling pinyin without tone marks gives 188, but included many posts in English that clearly says this is an idiom, proverb, or even part of culture. In any case, it's not. Maybe slogans or catchphrases, because they don't have to be universal. And I suppose at least some people who are doing this may actually have said it a lot. But it's just the straightforward construction in the Chinese grammar, without any idiomatic implications, references, literary value or anything like that.

After reading some answers I recommend "无奸不商" "人不利己，天诛地灭" "傻子太多，骗子不够用". The original phrase, whether it's an idiom or not, is not harsh enough compared to the answers.

@user23013 : One of my sources is this: youtu.be/5ncOyYzOP3w?t=333 . This a video by a popular Youtube blogger who lives in China and is married to a Chinese. In this video, the blogger explicitly says that this Chinese phrase is an idiom. He uses the word "idiom." Just follow the link I just provided, and you will immediately hear this guy saying that this is an idiom. The video has almost 3 million views and 40+ thousand likes.

Here is a typical Google search result: On the streets of Beijing a common phrase, that has no doubt permeated the upper echelons of Chinese business, states: "Neng pian, jiu pian" (if you can trick them, then trick them). It's not a stretch to assume that this Chinese business culture approach is the same brand of thinking that has allowed nearly perfect bootleg versions of Western products such as iPhones, film DVDs, clothing and even automobiles to be sold openly on the streets of China with little to no legal repercussions. Link: japaninc.com/node/4362