You can’t discuss the ocean with a well frog—he’s limited by the space he lives in. You can’t discuss ice with a summer insect—he’s bound to a single season. You can’t discuss the Way with a cramped scholar—he’s shackled by his doctrines.
—Zhuangzi[1]

During the Second World War, American officials were often perplexed by what they saw as China’s seemingly irrational strategic thought process. Despite being close wartime allies jointly opposing Japanese aggression, the Chinese leader at the time, Chiang Kai-shek, focused more on battling his domestic political rival, Mao Zedong, than on expelling Japanese invaders from Chinese territory. By 1944, as Richard Bernstein notes, both Chiang and Mao “were no longer primarily interested in defeating their common foreign enemy [Japan]...Both sides were now preparing for the postwar showdown whose ultimate prize would be China itself.”[2] As Chiang Kai-shek emphasized to journalist Theodore White during their first meeting in 1941: “You think it is important that I have kept the Japanese from expanding [in China] during these years…I tell you it is more important that I have kept the Communists from spreading. The Japanese are a disease of the skin; the Communists are a disease of the heart.”[3] Recalling this conversation decades later, White remarked that Chiang’s analogy “seemed odd to me, because at the time the Japanese were bombing the daylight out of both Chiang Kai-shek and the communists.”[4]

But what seemed odd to American interlocutors would not appear strange or incongruous to those who grew up immersed in the classic strategic texts of ancient China. In the third century BCE, the prime minister of the state of Qin, Lü Buwei, commissioned a work for the new king that provided a blueprint for the establishment of a unified empire. Known as The Annals of Lü Buwei (or Lüshi Chunqiu), it was a compendium of lessons on statecraft, war, and governance culled from extant historical examples of the preceding millennium. One vignette recounts the fifth century BCE ruler of the state of Wu, King Fuchai, discussing with his advisor the possibility of attacking a powerful domain to Wu’s north, the state of Qi. The advisor, however, notes that Qi, being culturally and linguistically different from Wu, poses less of an existential threat than Wu’s closer southern neighbor, Yue. Describing their similarities, the advisor remarks that Wu and Yue, “have the same customs and practices, and our languages are mutually intelligible. We can dwell on the land we win and govern the people we conquer [from each other]. Yue realizes the same thing about us. We cannot both exist.”[5] The advisor then warns the king about the danger of focusing exclusively on external threats without first neutralizing internal perils:

Yue is like a cancer in Wu’s heart and belly. It may not flare up, but the damage will be profound because it lies within. Qi is like an itch on Wu’s skin. It does not cause distress for long and further leaves no lasting wounds. To ignore Yue and attack Qi is like being frightened of a tiger but killing a three-year old pig. Although we might be victorious there will be endless trouble later.[6]

The king blatantly ignores this advice, compels his advisor to commit suicide, and launches a successful attack on Qi. As the advisor predicted, though, Yue conquers Wu soon after and completely exterminates it. In defeat, the king hangs himself only after first donning a blindfold so he will be unable to face his former advisor upon reaching the afterlife. Clearly, Chiang Kai-shek believed he was in an analogous predicament to King Fuchai and hoped to avoid a similar fate. In hindsight, Chiang’s analysis of the most dangerous threat facing his regime was far from odd or irrational.

Eight decades later, possessing a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of Chinese strategic thinking and decision-making influences remains equally vital to those engaging with the current leadership in Beijing. The West’s collective knowledge of China’s own philosophical and historical references, however, remains just as poorly developed. While the West has been wildly successful in convincing Beijing to study Thucydides,[7] it has yet to be persuaded that reading any of his Sinic counterparts might be equally beneficial for its own strategic purposes.[8] This deficiency is increasingly short-sighted.

Frogs in a Well: Unknown Unknowns

Marathon, Thermopylae, Guagamela, Cannae. These iconic battles permeate the collective consciousness of most contemporary Western military strategists, even if the historical details remain hazy. Writing after the conclusion of World War II, Dwight Eisenhower argued that “every ground commander seeks the battle of annihilation; so far as conditions permit, he tries to duplicate in modern war the classic example of Cannae.”[9] Most will not need a history refresher to grasp his point.

Similarly, by denying the importance of China’s own military history, Western strategists needlessly handicap their own ability to gain deeper insight into Beijing’s unique strategic and military thought processes. The People’s Liberation Army’s authoritative text on strategic thinking, The Science of Military Strategy, holds up the battles of Changshao (fought in 685 BCE)  and Bi (597 BCE) as “outstanding examples demonstrating the successful implementation of strategic guidance (戰略指導).”[10] While accounts of these iconic battles are readily found in extant historical sources, such as the Zuozhuan and the Grand Scribe’s Records, how many Western strategists possess even a basic awareness of these conflicts, let alone a deeper understanding of what contemporary lessons Chinese military leaders might be drawing from them? As Yuen Foong Khong argues in his work on the use of analogies in strategic thinking:

Because policymakers often encounter new foreign policy challenges and because structural uncertainty usually infuses the environment in which responses to such challenges must be forged, policymakers routinely turn to the past for guidance. When they do so, it behooves us to take the historical analogies they invoke seriously: these analogies do matter…analogies exert their impact on the decision-making process; they make certain options more attractive and others less so.[11]

Chinese political and military leaders, therefore, will hearken back to their own familiar historical examples, and it is imperative that we gain a comprehensive understanding of the references they are apt to draw from. Mao Zedong, in his 1938 article “On Protracted War,” invokes a seventh century BCE battle to clarify the Communist Party’s decision to reject moral and ethical considerations in the ongoing fight against the Japanese. Like Eisenhower, Mao saw no need to refresh in his readers’ minds any specific details about the Battle of the Hong River. It was simply assumed that his main point would be easily grasped. Paul Cohen, an historian of China, wrote an entire monograph tracing how the historical narrative of King Goujian of Yue’s military conquest of Wu was extensively leveraged by China’s governments in the twentieth century (both Nationalist and Communist) to frame the issue of “national humiliation” (guochi) in public discourse. We certainly miss some of the complexity and difference in perspective by not understanding the historical references the Chinese themselves rely on to assist and promote their own decision-making processes.

Summer Insects: How New and Original is Xi Jinping’s Thinking?

The leading work on how best to govern the Chinese nation reached the status of runaway bestseller immediately upon its release in his native country. Conversely, its corresponding English language version was repeatedly delayed and followed a tortuous path to publication. First translated by the U.S. State Department, it was initially considered so highly sensitive that even a Congressional request to view its draft was denied. Officials were concerned that the harsh tone and rhetoric used throughout the work—namely its repeated assertions that the West was the primary source of China’s ills and continued one-party dominance was the only path to salvation—would so upset its American readership that it might disrupt a critical and delicate relationship during a perilous and uncertain period.

This book was not Xi Jinping's The Governance of China. Rather, it was first published in 1943 by the leader of the Republic of China, head of the Kuomintang (KMT) party, and close wartime ally of the United States, Chiang Kai-shek. Its title: China's Destiny (中國之命運). Read today, it is striking how closely Chiang’s vision for China’s expansive and leading role in world affairs mirrors Xi’s contemporary dream. Chiang, much like Xi, rails against the “Century of Humiliation” and states categorically that “not until all lost territories have been recovered can we relax our efforts to wipe out this humiliation and save ourselves from destruction.”[12] Chiang goes on to say that China’s unified national culture is an “outstanding fact of China’s history based on her geography, her economic structure, the requirements of national defense, and a common historical destiny, and is not merely the result of political necessity.”[13]

Lest one believe that Chiang’s Nationalist government would have been more sensitive than the Chinese Communist Party to Uighur concerns about cultural destruction, Chiang clarified that “the difference between the Han [Chinese] and Mohammedans [i.e., Uighur Muslims] is only in religion and different habits of life. In short, our various clans actually belong to the same nation, as well as to the same racial stock…the differentiation among China’s peoples is due to regional and religious factors, and not to race or blood…All in all,” Chiang reminds his readers, “China’s history during the past five thousand years is the record of the common destiny of all these clans.”[14] It is only a slight evolution and expansion of scope from Chiang’s conception of common destiny to Xi Jinping’s “Community of Common Destiny.”[15]

Chiang firmly grounds his vision in ancient texts, tracing a pure and unbroken Chinese cultural bloodline back to a verse found in the Book of Odes. He relies on other texts, such as the Book of Documents, Sima Qian’s Shiji, and the Han Shu to justify sweeping territorial claims. These works are clearly still alive and relevant to Chinese leaders and thinkers on all sides of the Sinic political spectrum. As the Warring States era text known as the Guanzi argues: “Those who would question the present should investigate the past. Those who do not understand what is to come should look at what has gone before.”[16] The West’s indifference to Chinese history’s influence on current leaders often leaves us unaware of many of the continuities in Chinese strategic thinking.

Conclusion

Studying these ancient texts will not reveal any “secret plans” that Beijing relies on to outmaneuver unwitting Westerners, as Michael Pillsbury posits in his highly influential but problematic book, The Hundred Year Marathon.[17] While these classical texts help us frame similar debates and remind us of universal sources of friction and cooperation, they do not provide either the West or China with any easy solutions to our current predicaments. Yet for those struggling to gain insight into what drives current thinking in Beijing, spending a few hours studying an ancient Chinese debate on arcane tithing practices might be time better spent than perusing the latest seemingly cutting edge political science takes emanating from Western academia or Washington think tanks.

“If you only listen to one [side of an issue], you will never be able to distinguish the intelligent from the stupid.”

As a final thought, the West should engage these texts not only to better understand China, but also ourselves. The continuous strife and uncertainty of the Warring States period propelled the great thinkers of that age to develop far reaching analyses of fundamental issues facing societies of all eras and cultures. Those writers sparked debates that deal with universal issues about  human nature, governance, and warfare. Western strategists would benefit enormously from studying the debate between Mencius and Xunzi on whether human nature is good or evil; Mohist and Daoist critiques of traditional Confucian values; discussions of the economic basis of state power found in works attributed to Shang Yang and Guan Zhong; the Zuozhuan’s description of alliance politics in an era of violent competition; or Han Fei’s conception of power as a synthesis of positional advantage (shi 勢), technique (shu 術), and regulation (fa 法). None of this means that Eastern thinking should replace Western thought in our own professional military education institutions, but being able to identify, contrast, and synthesize alternate viewpoints remains vital to strategic success. Or, as the Hanfeizi warns: “If you only listen to one [side of an issue], you will never be able to distinguish the intelligent from the stupid.”[18]

John F. Sullivan is a former U.S. Army China Foreign Area Officer. He is currently working on an historical commentary to the Sunzi Bingfa, grounding its interpretation in the wider body of contemporaneous philosophical, military, and strategic texts from the Warring States era.

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Header Image: Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek in Chongqing, China, in September 1945, toasting the victory over Japan (AFP/Getty)

Notes:

[1] Zhuangzi: The Complete Works, trans. Burton Watson, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013, 126.

[2] Richard Bernstein. China 1945: Mao’s Revolution and America’s Fateful Choice, (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2014), 38.

[3] Theodore White and Annalee Jacoby. Thunder Out of China, (London: Victor Gollangz Ltd., 1947), 126. (emphasis added).

[4] China: The Roots of Madness, narrated by Theodore White. National Archives and Records Administration (1967), Episode 5.

[5] The Annals of Lü Buwei, trans. John Knoblock and Jeffrey Riegel, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 394.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Matt Bevan, “Xi Jinping discussed the Thucydides Trap with Malcolm Turnbull, revealing his view of the world today,” ABC News, 5 Jul 2021, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-06/prime-minister-turnbull-xi-jinping-discuss-the-trap-of-war/100267570.

[8] John Sullivan, “Trapped by Thucydides? Updating the Staretgic Canon for a Sinocentric Era,” War on the Rocks, 28 Dec 2020, https://warontherocks.com/2020/12/trapped-by-thucydides-updating-the-strategic-canon-for-a-sinocentric-era/.

[9] Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (New York: Double Day & Co., 1948), 325.

[10] Shou Xiaosong, ed., The Science of Military Strategy (Zhanlue Xue) [战略学], (Beijing: PLA Press, 2013), 29. Author’s translation. The original Chinese reads: 晋楚邲之战中楚军的发制人是非常出色的战略指导.

[11] Yuen Foong Khong. Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 252.

[12] Chiang Kai-shek. China’s Destiny, Ed. Philip Jaffe (New York: Roy Publishers, 1947), 34.

[13]  Ibid, 35.

[14] Ibid, 39-40.

[15] Liza Tobin, “Xi’s Vision for Transforming Global Governance: A Strategic Challenge for Washington and Its Allies,” Texas National Security Review 2, No 1 (November 2018): 154-166, https://tnsr.org/2018/11/xis-vision-for-transforming-global-governance-a-strategic-challenge-for-washington-and-its-allies/.

[16] Guanzi: Political, Economic, and Philosophical Essays from Early China, Vol. I, trans. W. Allyn Rickett (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021), 37.

[17] Pillsbury argues that the Chinese do not use these historical references “metaphorically,” but instead “explicitly use these ancient axioms” to develop current war plans and actionable national-level strategies. See Michael Pillsbury, The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 2015), 33.

[18] Hanfeizi, Chapter 30. Author’s translation. The original Chinese text reads: 聽則智愚不分.