Rarely did Chinese statesmen risk the outcome of a conflict on a single all-or-nothing clash; elaborate multiyear maneuvers were closer to their style. Where the Western tradition prized the decisive clash of forces emphasizing feats of heroism, the Chinese ideal stressed subtlety, indirection, and the patient accumulation of relative advantage.
This contrast is reflected in the respective intellectual games favored by each civilization. China’s most enduring game is wei qi (圍棋, pronounced roughly “way chee,” and often known in the West by a variation of its Japanese name, go). Wei qi translates as “a game of surrounding pieces”; it implies a concept of strategic encirclement.
This contrast is reflected in the respective intellectual games favored by each civilization. China’s most enduring game is wei qi (圍棋, pronounced roughly “way chee,” and often known in the West by a variation of its Japanese name, go). Wei qi translates as “a game of surrounding pieces”; it implies a concept of strategic encirclement.
Black has won by a slight margin.
David Lai (2004) - Learning from the Stones: A Go Approach to Mastering China’s Strategic Concept, Shi.
Carlisle, PA: US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.
The board, a grid of nineteen-by-nineteen lines, begins empty. Each player has 180 pieces, or stones, at his disposal, each of equal value with the others. The players take turns placing stones at any point on the board, building up positions of strength while working to encircle and capture the opponent’s stones. Multiple contests take place simultaneously in different regions of the board. The balance of forces shifts incrementally with each move, as the players implement strategic plans and react to each other’s initiatives. At the end of a well-played game, the board is filled by partially interlocking areas of strength. The margin of advantage is often slim, and to the untrained eye, the identity of the winner is not always immediately obvious.
Chess, on the other hand, is about total victory. The purpose of the game is checkmate, to put the opposing king into a position where he cannot move without being destroyed. The vast majority of games end in total victory achieved by attrition or, more rarely, a dramatic, skillful maneuver. The only other possible outcome is a draw, meaning the abandonment of the hope for victory by both parties.
If chess is about the decisive battle, wei qi is about the protracted campaign. The chess player aims for total victory. The wei qi player seeks relative advantage. In chess, the player always has the capability of the adversary in front of him; all the pieces are always fully deployed.
» Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting.
The highest form of warfare is to attack the enemy’s strategy itself. «
The Art of War, Sun Tzu.
A similar contrast exists in the case of China’s distinctive military theory (中国军事思想). Its foundations were laid during a period of upheaval, when ruthless struggles between rival kingdoms decimated China’s population. Reacting to this slaughter (and seeking to emerge victorious from it), Chinese thinkers developed strategic thought that placed a premium on victory through psychological advantage and preached the avoidance of direct conflict.
Mao Zedong, July 14, 1956.
On his secret mission to establish a US-China alliance against the Soviet Union, US National Security
Advisor Henry Kissinger meets with Zhou Enlai (Premier of the PRC since 1949) in Beijing on July 9, 1971.
Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Mao Zedong (founding leader of the PRC since 1949)
welcomes President of the United States Richard Nixon (1969-1974) in Beijing on February 21, 1972.
94-year-old former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Beijing on July 19, 2017.
The seminal figure in this tradition is known to history as Sun Tzu (or “Master Sun”), author of the famed treatise The Art of War. Intriguingly, no one is sure exactly who he was. Since ancient times, scholars have debated the identity of The Art of War’s author and the date of its composition. The book presents itself as a collection of sayings by one Sun Wu, a general and wandering military advisor from the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history (770–476 B.C. ), as recorded by his disciples.
[…] Well over two thousand years after its composition, this volume of epigrammatic observations on strategy, diplomacy, and war—written in classical Chinese, halfway between poetry and prose—remains a central text of military thought. Its maxims found vivid expression in the twentieth-century Chinese civil war (人民战争) at the hands of Sun Tzu’s student Mao Zedong, and in the Vietnam wars, as Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap employed Sun Tzu’s principles of indirect attack and psychological combat (以逸待劳) against France and then the United States.
[…] Well over two thousand years after its composition, this volume of epigrammatic observations on strategy, diplomacy, and war—written in classical Chinese, halfway between poetry and prose—remains a central text of military thought. Its maxims found vivid expression in the twentieth-century Chinese civil war (人民战争) at the hands of Sun Tzu’s student Mao Zedong, and in the Vietnam wars, as Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap employed Sun Tzu’s principles of indirect attack and psychological combat (以逸待劳) against France and then the United States.
Quoted from:
Henry Kissinger (2012) - On China.
Henry Kissinger (2012) - On China.
