SOURCE: Griffith, Samuel B. Introduction to The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, translated by Samuel B. Griffith, pp. 1-56. London: Oxford University Press, 1963.

[In the following essay, Griffith discusses problems with determining the authorship of The Art of War, discrepancies in the size of the work, the nature of warfare in Sun Tzu's time, and Sun Tzu's influence on Mao Tse-Tung.]

I

THE AUTHOR

Over the centuries countless Chinese critics have devoted a great deal of attention to examination of literary works ascribed to the ‘classical’ period, an era usually defined as extending from 551 b.c., the probable birth year of Confucius, to 249 b.c., when King Chao of Ch'in liquidated the Chou dynasty.

One of the principal results of this scholarly endeavour has been to confirm, or more often to disprove, traditional claims relating to the authenticity of the works in question. The Art of War has not escaped the careful attention of dozens of these learned analysts, who generally agree that The Thirteen Chapters could not have been composed about 500 b.c., as the Grand Historiographer Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien alleged, but belongs to a later age.

The first to doubt the reliability of Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien's biography of Sun Wu was an eleventh-century Sung scholar, Yeh Cheng-tsê, who concluded that Sun Wu never existed and that The Art of War ascribed to him was ‘probably a fabrication of disputatious sophists’ of the Warring States period (453-221 b.c.¹). In support of this opinion he noted that Sun Wu (who according to Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien was a general in Wu during the reign of King Ho-lü) was not mentioned in Tso Ch'iu-ming's commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals of Lu State. He also observed that armies of the Spring and Autumn (771-481 b.c.) were invariably commanded by rulers, members of their families, powerful vassals, or trusted ministers, and that not until the period of the Warring States were they commanded by professional generals.² Consequently, he continues, ‘the difficulty’ of operational control being exercised from the capital ‘did not exist during the Spring and Autumn and only began during the Warring States’. His contemporary, Mei Yao-ch'en (one of the commentators on The Art of War), stated his opinion bluntly: ‘This is a book of theories of the Warring States period when each antagonist tried to outwit the other.’ These views were challenged by another Sung scholar, Sung Lien, who accepted the traditional biography as valid, but adduced little persuasive evidence in support of his position.

In A Study of Apocryphal Books Ancient and Modern, the Ch'ing critic Yao Ch'i-heng (b. a.d. 1647) expressed two doubts as to the authenticity of the Sun Tzu. First he points out (as Yeh Cheng-tsê had previously) that neither the author nor the work attributed to him is mentioned in Tso's commentary. If Sun Wu did in fact ‘defeat Ch'u, enter Ying, and achieve great merit’ how does it happen, he asks, that the author of such ‘dazzling achievements’ was ‘ignored’ by Tso Ch'iu-ming, who ‘was most detailed in respect to the affairs of Wu’?³ He concurs with Yeh that the tale of Sun Tzu's experiment with King Ho-lü's concubines is ‘fantastic’ and not worthy of belief,⁴ and quotes with approval Yeh's statement relating to the exercise of military command, which, he adds, was a ‘profound’ remark. Finally:

But then, did this Sun Wu exist or did he not? Did he exist, but not necessarily as Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien relates? Was the book ascribed to him written by him? Or was it written by one of his later disciples? None of this can be determined.⁵

Ch'uan Tsu-wang, another Ch'ing critic, doubted that Sun Wu was an historical personage. He concurred with Yeh Cheng-tsê that Sun Wu and his book were fabrications of ‘disputatious sophists’, a theory which according to him ‘resolved the suspicions of a thousand generations’. As an afterthought he added: ‘Naturally the Thirteen Chapters were produced by someone well versed in military matters.’⁶

Yao Nai (1732-1815) conceded that Sun Wu may have lived in Wu or at least visited that state, ‘yet the Thirteen Chapters were not written by him’. They were composed later, in the period of the Warring States, ‘by those who discussed military matters and were attributed to him. That is all.’⁷ Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, a respected modern critic, concurs in the opinion that The Art of War was written during the Warring States: ‘What the book says about the pattern of war, battle tactics and planning is not possibly relevant to the Spring and Autumn.’⁸

In his History of Chinese Philosophy Fung Yu-lan adverts more than once to the problem of authorship of early literary works. In a discussion of Mo Tzu (479-381 b.c.) he writes:

So far as we know today, the earliest work to have been composed by anybody, in a private rather than an official capacity, is the Lun Yu, which is a record of the most simple and abbreviated type, of Confucius' sayings. Later … there is a distinct advance from disjointed conversations of this kind to records of conversations of considerable length, displaying a definite story-like structure. This was the first great development in style of the writings of the Warring States philosophers. Still later such records were replaced by true essay writing. …⁹

Structure is thus of considerable importance in dating a Chinese work said to be ancient. The type of thematic development found in the Sun Tzu is first encountered in Chinese literature of the Warring States.

According to Fung Yu-lan, nobody during the Spring and Autumn ‘wrote books under his own name expressing his own opinions, in contradistinction to authorship of historical works or other writings directly connected with official position’.¹⁰ Earlier scholars had arrived at the same conclusion; Fung quotes the eminent eighteenth-century historian Chang Hsüeh-ch'eng in support of his views:

During the early period there were no instances of the (private) writing of books. The officials and teachers preserved the literary records, and the historians made record of the passage of events. … It was only when the times were out of joint that teachers and scholars set up their (own private) teachings. …¹¹

Those who agree with Sung Lien that the Shih Chi biography of Sun Tzu is credible base their case primarily on the references in the text to the enmity between the states of Wu and Yüeh and conclude that Sun Tzu must have lived before Yüeh extinguished Wu in 474 b.c. In chapter vi Sun Tzu observes that although the troops of Yüeh were numerous, their superiority would avail them nothing ‘in respect to the outcome’. Again in chapter xi, when speaking of mutual cooperation between elements of the army, he states that although the peoples of Wu and Yüeh were enemies, they would, if together in a boat tossed by the waves, co-operate ‘just as the right hand does with the left’.

These references do not, however, necessarily substantiate the traditional date. They could have been deliberately inserted to mislead the reader into believing that the book was more ancient than it actually was. Such historical allusion is a technique of literary forgery which flourished particularly during the Warring States when anonymous authors frequently sought to endow their works with the authority of antiquity.

The first verse in chapter xiii declares that during war ‘the affairs of seven hundred thousand families are disrupted’. This suggests to the Soviet sinologue N. Konrad that the author must have lived in an era when the agricultural system known as ching-t'ien, which Konrad identifies with a ‘slave’ economy, prevailed. Konrad also cites the references to Hegemonic kings in chapter xi to support his theory that the classic must be assigned to the period of the Wu Pa, or the ‘Five Lords Protector’, that is, to the seventh or at latest the early sixth century b.c. These are superficially the most compelling arguments in support of the traditional date, or, if Konrad's hypotheses are to be accepted, of an even earlier one.

Scholars disagree as to whether the agricultural pattern described by the term ching t'ien (literally, ‘well field’) actually existed. Some authorities believe it persisted in isolated areas from the early Chou (i.e. the late twelfth century b.c.) until abolished by Shang Yang shortly after 340 b.c. Hu Shih has maintained that it represented an agricultural Utopia dreamed up by an idyllic chronicler. Maspero, who believes it did exist, says it was abolished in Chin before that state was broken up. He writes:

… aussi le Tsin fut-il le premier pays ou le vieux système compliqué du ching disparut, remplacé par un système plus simple d'allocations de terres par famille, et non par groupe de huit familles, système que, s'il n'apportait pas encore aux paysans la propriété de la terre, était du moins un pas en avant très net.¹²

Mencius (398-314 b.c.) describes such a system, but some critics believe it to have been a product of his fertile imagination, and one scholar has written: ‘This may have been an ideal system devised by Mencius himself. It is not likely that there could have been such a clear-cut system.’ However, Sun Tzu refers indirectly to this pattern of agriculture, and consequently must either have seen it in actual operation or have read about it.

In the ching t'ien, eight peasant families were allotted land surrounding a central plot (see the character ching) which they cultivated for the lord of the manor.¹³ The produce of the other eight, also communally cultivated, was the property of the peasants. If an able-bodied young man were taken from one of these households his share of work in the fields naturally would have to be assumed by the seven households from whom none had been conscripted. Thus when one hundred thousand men were mobilized, the affairs of seven hundred thousand families were ‘disrupted’. But if the system did indeed exist for hundreds of years prior to about 350 b.c. it is obvious that general references to it cannot be of much value in the precise dating of documents.

Nor does use of the term ‘Hegemonic king’ necessarily indicate that The Art of War was composed in the historical period of ‘The Lords Protector’ (Wu Pa). As late as c. 250 b.c. we find Han Fei Tzu saying that the enterprise ‘of the Hegemonic Ruler is the highest goal of the Lord of Men’.¹⁴ The term ‘Hegemonic king’ is used in The Art of War in the sense Han Fei Tzu used ‘Hegemonic Ruler’.

In ancient China war had been regarded as a knightly contest. As such, it had been governed by a code to which both sides generally adhered. Many illustrations of this are found in the Tso Chuan. For example, in 632 b.c. the Chin commander, after defeating Ch'u at Ch'eng P'u, gave the vanquished enemy three days' supply of food. This courtesy was later reciprocated by a Ch'u army victorious at Pi. By the time The Art of War was written this code had been long abandoned.

During the Spring and Autumn armies were small, inefficiently organized, usually ineptly led, poorly equipped, badly trained, and haphazardly supplied. Many campaigns ended in disaster simply because the troops could find nothing to eat. The invasion of Ch'u by Wu in 506 b.c. which culminated in the capture and destruction of Ying, the Ch'u capital, is one of the rare examples of a successful lengthy campaign in the entire Spring and Autumn period, when issues were ordinarily settled in a day.¹⁵ Of course, cities were besieged and armies sometimes kept in the field for protracted periods. But such operations were not normal, first because they were impractical and second because keeping the army over the season was morally interdicted.

The author of The Art of War lived at a time when large armies were effectively organized, well trained, and commanded by professional generals. In the opening verse of chapter ii the phrase ‘one hundred thousand armoured troops’ is used in a discussion of the related problems of war finances, supply, and replenishment. Armies of this size were unknown in China before 500 b.c.

The armies Sun Tzu discusses were composed of tactical elements capable of independent and co-ordinated manœuvre and responsive to control exercised by use of bells, gongs, drums, flags, and banners. The undrilled peasant levies of the Spring and Autumn could not possibly have been capable of such manœuvres.

Sun Tzu's definitions of the qualities to be sought in a good general indicate that he did not conceive high military office to be a prerogative limited to an hereditary aristocracy as was the earlier custom. His concern with the relationship between a field commander and the sovereign reflects his interest in establishing the authority of the professional general. In chapter iii he names the ways in which a ruler may bring misfortune upon the army by interfering with its operations and administration. And in chapter viii he asserts that the general, having received the mandate of command, is not required to obey the orders of the sovereign blindly, but should act as circumstances dictate. This concept is completely inconsistent with traditional thought.

In chapter xiii Sun Tzu describes the organization, financing, and direction of secret operations. Here he observes that what enables the enlightened ruler and the sage general to achieve results beyond the capability of the ordinary man is foreknowledge. This he asserts cannot be elicited from disembodied spirits, supernatural beings, or analogy with past events, but only from men who know the enemy situation. His adjuration against divination and the taking of omens (which he says must be rigorously prohibited) is incompatible with the Spring and Autumn when belief in spirits was universal and divination by tortoise-shell and yarrow-stalks an essential preliminary to any undertaking which involved the fortunes of a ruling house.¹⁶

Sun Tzu's theory of war and strategy and his tactical doctrine are of course germane to the problem of dating. Because war is of vital importance to the state and a question of survival or ruin it must be thoroughly investigated. Thus, the opening verses of the classic outline a method for analysis of the factors which constitute military strength. This process, now described as an ‘Estimate (or Appreciation) of the Situation’, is rational and is scarcely consistent with the mentality characteristic of the Spring and Autumn, when rulers indulged in military adventures to satisfy a whim, to revenge a slight or an insult, or to collect booty.

When Sun Tzu wrote, war had become a dangerous business; the recourse when other means had failed. The best policy, he says, is ‘to attack the enemy's plans’; the next best to disrupt his alliances, for ‘to subdue the enemy's army without fighting is the acme of skill’. This indicates his perception that war was no longer a regulated pastime, but the ultimate instrument of statecraft.

The strategic and tactical doctrines expounded in The Art of War are based on deception, the creation of false appearances to mystify and delude the enemy, the indirect approach, ready adaptability to the enemy situation, flexible and coordinated manœuvre of separate combat elements, and speedy concentration against points of weakness. Successful application of such tactics requires highly mobile and well-trained shock and élite troops. Such formations were not common until the Warring States.

In chapter ii, and again in chapter v, there are specific references to the crossbow. The first reads: As to government expenditures, those due to broken-down chariots, worn-out horses, armour and helmets, arrows and crossbows …’; the latter: ‘His potential is that of a fully drawn crossbow; his timing the release of the trigger.’ Precisely when the crossbow, which revolutionized Chinese warfare, was introduced has not been determined; most scholars put the date at about 400 b.c. The first reference to it is found in Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien's description of the battle at Ma Ling fought in 341 b.c. where Sun Pin, Chief Strategist of Ch'i, defeated a Wei army commanded by his erstwhile friend P'ang Chüan. The ten thousand crossbowmen Sun Pin had placed in ambush practically annihilated the enemy. Again in chapter xi Sun Tzu uses ‘release of the trigger’ as a figure of speech to describe the sudden unleashing of an army's potential energy.

The term chin as a generic word descriptive of ‘money’ or ‘metallic currency’ came into use during the Warring States.¹⁷ Although money was cast in several forms during the late Spring and Autumn its acceptance as a medium of exchange was inevitably a gradual process. Certainly a term specifically descriptive of metallic currency would not have been used five times in the text unless money was common.

The phrase meaning ‘armoured troops’, or ‘troops wearing armour’, occurs in the first verse of chapter ii.¹⁸ There were no ‘armoured troops’ in the Spring and Autumn. At that time only the shih¹⁹—the chariot-riding nobility—and their immediate retainers carried primitive shields of lacquered leather or varnished rhinoceros hide. The footmen wore padded jackets; only much later were they to be provided with protective garments of treated sharkskin or animal hide.

Sun Tzu uses the character chu in the sense of ‘sovereign’ eleven times. In the Spring and Autumn this character meant ‘lord’ or ‘master’ and was used in addressing a minister. The connotation ‘sovereign’ was a later assimilation. This anachronism was noticed by the Ch'ing scholar Yao Nai.

In chapter vii we read: ‘In a forced march of fifty li, the commander of the Shang (Upper, or Van) army will be captured.’ The terms Shang Chiang, Chung Chiang, and Hsia Chiang to designate the generals in command of the traditional ‘Three Armies’ were not commonly used until the Warring States.²⁰ Two terms which occur in chapter xiii, ‘Secret Operations’, did not have the specific meaning in which they are used in the context until the Warring States. These are yeh che, meaning ‘chamberlain’, ‘receptionist’, or ‘usher’, and she jen, meaning ‘retainers’ or ‘bodyguard’.

Sun Tzu believed that the only constant in war is constant change and to illustrate this he used several figures of speech, among which is ‘of the five elements, none is always predominant’. The theory of the constant mutation of the five ‘powers’ or ‘elements’: earth, wood, fire, metal, and water, did not develop as a philosophical concept until the Warring States. In earlier times they appear to have been regarded as the five elemental substances.

It is significant that Sun Tzu does not refer to cavalry. Cavalry was not made an integral branch in any Chinese army until 320 b.c. when King Wu Ling of Chao State introduced it—and trousers. It is reasonable to assume that if cavalry had been familiar to Sun Tzu he would have mentioned it. This is interesting negative testimony that The Art of War was not written in the third century b.c. as Maspero believed.²¹

Thus in respect to date of composition, we derive from the text itself, the best possible source, evidence which indicates almost beyond a doubt that the work was written at least a century (and more likely a century and a half) after Ssu-ma Ch'ien says it was. We may therefore assign this first of all military classics to the period c. 400-320 b.c.

What, then, is the source of the Sun Tzu legend which the Grand Historiographer perpetuated? What is the explanation of the connexion between this Sun Tzu of myth and Wu State? Professor Ku Chieh-kang has proposed the following ingenious theory:

It can be presumed that when Ch'i in 341 b.c. launched a punitive expedition against Wei in order to relieve Han, T'ien Chi was the general and Sun Pin was the strategist. T'ien Chi later on fled to Ch'u and Ch'u made T'ien Chi a feudal lord in Chiangnan which was Wu territory. It might be that Sun Pin had followed T'ien Chi to the Chiang-nan area and there wrote his Sun Tzu Ping Fa. Later the people made a chronological mistake and described him as having lived during the Spring and Autumn period and, furthermore, created a Sun Wu who helped Ho-lu in his invasion of Ch'u, and this story was adopted by Ssu-ma Ch'ien.²²

If Sun Pin did write The Thirteen Chapters it would not in his time have been considered unethical to ascribe the work to a figure alleged to have lived a century and a half before. Or did ‘people’ simply make a ‘chronological mistake’ as Professor Ku Chieh-kang opines? Doctor Kuo Mo-jo writes: ‘The biography of Sun Wu is not dependable; it is fiction. The Sun Tzu Ping Fa was written during the Warring Kingdoms period; its authorship is unknown. It is difficult to determine whether Sun Pin was the author.’²³

Possibly this work is a compendium of the teachings of an unknown Warring States strategist. The Analects of Confucius is just such a compilation. As Fung Yu-lan points out, the question of authorship of ancient literary works is one which frequently defies solution:

The conception of authorship was evidently not wholly clear in early China, so that when we find a book named after a certain man of the Warring States period, or earlier, this does not necessarily mean that the book was originally actually written by that man himself. What part of it was the addition of his followers, and what part was by the original author, was not at that time looked upon as requiring any distinction and hence today cannot for the most part be distinguished any longer.²⁴

Thus we arrive finally at the same impasse as did Yao Ch'i-heng three centuries ago. We do not know if this Sun Wu existed; we do not know if the work ascribed to him was written by him, and we are therefore forced, with the eminent Ch'ing scholar, to place the Sun Tzu in the category of ‘Authorship Unsettled’. But the originality, the consistent style, and the thematic development suggest that The Thirteen Chapters is not a compilation, but was written by a singularly imaginative individual who had considerable practical experience in war.

II

THE TEXT

Is the present text of Sun Tzu's classic identical with The Thirteen Chapters familiar to Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien? To this tantalizing question there can be no conclusive answer, for the early records relating to The Art of War are slightly confused.

In the late first century b.c. the scholar Liu Hsiang was directed by the Emperor to begin collecting literary works for the Imperial Library. After his death this task was continued by his son, Liu Hsin.²⁵ In his ‘Seven Syllabi’ Liu Hsiang had noted the existence of an Art of War by one Sun Tzu ‘in three rolls’, and some years later Pan Ku,²⁶ the historian of the Former Han dynasty, listed ‘The Art of War of Sun Tzu of Wu in eighty-two chapters with nine rolls of diagrams’ as being in the Imperial Library.²⁷ Pan Ku assigned this compilation to Jen Hung, who as a colleague of Liu Hsiang had catalogued military works. But in the preface to his edition, probably composed about a.d. 200, Ts'ao Ts'ao refers to thirteen chapters. Sixty-nine chapters thus mysteriously appeared and as mysteriously vanished between the time Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien wrote the Shih Chi (c. 100 b.c.) and Ts'ao Ts'ao wrote his ‘Brief Explanation’ about three hundred years later. Or did they? Did these sixty-nine chapters ever in fact exist? I suspect they did not.

There are several possible explanations for this disparity in figures. One is that attributed material and commentary had become associated with the text during the interval between the composition of the Shih Chi and the record of eighty-two chapters ascribed by Pan Ku to Jen Hung. It may be that Jen Hung assembled all the material relating to Sun Tzu without attempting to distinguish the original text from accretions.

Or the difference in figures may be due to the method by which books were manufactured, or put together, in ancient China. At that time paper had not yet been invented and records were ordinarily written with ink made of soot on sections of bamboo or on thin wooden slips. A wooden slip or a split of bamboo suitable for this purpose would have measured 8 to 10 inches in length and about [frac34] inch in width. Twelve to fifteen characters (depending of course on individual calligraphy) were written on these slips, many of which have been found. The edges of the slips were sometimes notched or pierced in two places so that they could be connected sequentially by thongs made of leather, silk, or hemp.²⁸ Sometimes slips were perforated at one end and strung together. When the first system was used chapters or sections of books could have been rolled for storage exactly as a scroll is today.

As the text of the Sun Tzu runs to something over thirteen thousand characters, approximately one thousand such slips would have been needed to record it. Had there been assembled as a unit the resulting ‘book’, when spread, would measure over 60 feet in length, and when rolled would have required an ox-cart to transport. But books were divided then, as they are today, into sections or chapters. These sections were naturally of varying length; some may have required a dozen slips, others twenty or more. This suggests the possibility that Jen Hung or a copyist made a careless mistake and recorded eighty-two ‘rolls’ as eighty-two ‘chapters’. Errors in transcription were by no means uncommon. But how do we reconcile the three rolls mentioned in the ‘Seven Syllabi’ with the figure ‘eighty-two’? Only by presuming that the ‘Seven Syllabi’ text was written on silk rather than on slips.

Tu Mu²⁹ attempted to solve this problem by accusing Ts'ao Ts'ao of condensing the text by ‘pruning away redundancies’. Indeed Ts'ao Ts'ao had laid himself open to the charge, for in his introduction he says that as the texts current in his time ‘missed the essential meaning’ he had undertaken to write a ‘brief explanation’. Thus it appears that Ts'ao Ts'ao may have edited the text and excised portions he considered to be accretions. Probably Ts'ao Ts'ao had various versions available and by comparison of them produced what he considered to be an authentic text. It is this, with his commentary, which has been preserved. And while we cannot know that it is identical with the Sun Tzu familiar to Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien, I think it reasonable to assume that in essential respects it is.

As this work was well known in the late fourth century b.c. it must already have been in circulation for a number of years. In chapter iii of The Book of Lord Shang at least half a dozen of Sun Tzu's verses are paraphrased.³⁰ While it is true that the book ascribed to Shang Yang (who was torn apart by chariots in 338 b.c.) was probably compiled by members of the Legalist School shortly after his death, scholars believe it reflects his sayings and opinions.

Han Fei Tzu, another Legalist statesman and author, who died toward the end of the third century b.c., was acquainted with the Sun Tzu; in the chapter of his work entitled ‘Five Vermin’ he remarks that ‘in every family there are men who preserve copies of the books of Sun Wu and Wu Ch'i’.³¹ In ‘The Way to Maintain the State’ he observes that in a Legalist Utopia ‘the tactics of Sun Wu and Wu Ch'i would be abandoned’, presumably because with ‘All-under-Heaven’ brought under the centralized totalitarian rule he advocated there would be no occasion for war.

Hsün Tzu (c. 320-235 b.c.) also refers to both Sun Tzu and Wu Ch'i. In ‘A Debate on Military Affairs’, there is recorded a discussion between the philosopher and General Lin-wu in the presence of King Hsiao-ch'en of Chao.³² The General had obviously studied The Thirteen Chapters thoroughly; the line of his argument follows Sun Tzu almost to the letter:

What is valuable in military affairs is strength and advantage; what is done is sudden alteration of troop movements and deceitful stratagems. He who knows best how to manage an army is sudden in his movements; his plans are very deep-laid, and no one knows whence he may attack. When Sun and Wu led armies, they had no enemies in the whole country.³³

Hsün Tzu, a Confucian, argues from a moral and ethical basis, and as one might expect, demolishes his opponent: ‘The armies of the benevolent (jen) man cannot use deceit.’³⁴ But Hsün Tzu was not impractical: he approved of armies ‘for the purpose of stopping tyranny and getting rid of injury’.³⁵

Shortly after unifying China in 221 b.c. the First Universal Emperor, Shih Huang Ti, ordered the collection and destruction of books which his Legalist advisers considered pernicious. This edict was aimed specifically at works attributed to Confucius and his school. Certain types of books such as those dealing with technical subjects were declared exempt, and as Ch'in was a wholly militarized state (and had been one for a century) it is logical to assume that works which related to the art of war would have been spared. (This book-burning was not in fact the complete holocaust which later Confucian scholars represent it to have been, for apparently the edict was none too strenuously enforced. It was revoked in 196 b.c. by the Han Emperor Hui. The later Emperor Wu offered generous rewards to all those who presented copies of ancient works.)

In 81 b.c. a number of scholars were summoned to the capital for discussions. One of the important matters on the agenda was how the administration of the Empire might be improved. The literati unanimously agreed that government monopolies in salt, iron, and fermented liquor should be abolished. This provoked a great debate at which the Emperor Chao presided.³⁶ Some time later Huan K'uan recorded the substance of the arguments in which appear one direct quotation from The Art of War and paraphrases of several verses. This is striking testimony to the esteem in which The Thirteen Chapters were then held.

There is no record of Han commentators on Sun Tzu's work, but there must have been some, for as early as Liu Hsiang's time there were sixty-three recognized ‘schools’ of military theoreticians. In a.d. 23 the usurper Wang Mang ‘appointed to office the [various] persons skilled in the methods of the sixty-three schools of military arts whom he had summoned.’³⁷

Toward the close of the second century a.d. and in the early years of the third we find commentators of record. In addition to Ts'ao Ts'ao, Wang Ling, known as ‘Master Wang’, Chia Yeh, and Chang Tzu-shang, wrote works no longer extant. During the Liang dynasty (a.d. 502-56) at least two editions of Sun Tzu appeared. The interpretations of a ‘Mr.’ Meng are preserved in the ‘Ten School’ version; Shan Yu's have been lost.

Among T'ang (618-905) critics, Tu Yü, his grandson the poet Tu Mu, Li Ch'üan, Ch'en Hao, and Chia Lin were the most respected. Separate editions containing the interpretations of the last four were published; Tu Yü's comments were included with the text of The Thirteen Chapters contained in his monumental encyclopedia, the T'ung Tien (chapters 148-63). Selected verses from Sun Tzu were included in other anthologies completed during the T'ang, notably in the Pei T'ang Shu Ch'ao (chapters 115-16).

Interest grew in the Sung dynasty; The Thirteen Chapters were included in the T'ai P'ing Yu Lan (chapters 270-337). Of numerous published commentaries, those of Mei Yao-ch'en, Wang Hsi, Ho Yen-hsi, and Chang Yü were selected by both Chi T'ien-pao and Cheng Yu-hsien for inclusion in their editions, respectively entitled Shih Chia Chu (‘Ten School’) and Shih I Chia Chu (‘Eleven School’). Both also included Ts'ao Ts'ao and ‘Mr.’ Meng as well as the four T'ang scholars previously named. In both collations comments were arranged in chronological order under the verses to which they apply. As Tu Yu's comments had been included in his T'ung Tien rather than in a separately published work, Chi T'ien-pao did not consider that he represented a ‘school’. The difference in the titles of these two compilations is therefore of no importance. Chi T'ien-pao's edition was later incorporated into The Taoist Canon; it was this which Sun Hsing-yen copied when he discovered it at a Taoist monastery in Shensi province.

But it was not the individual works of these various scholars, important as they were, which gave the greatest impetus to study of The Art of War during the Sung. This derived rather from an edict issued by the Emperor Sheng-tsung (1068-85) which designated seven ‘Martial Classics’ by name and prescribed them as obligatory study for aspirants to commission in the army. Ts'ao Ts'ao's edition was placed first on this list.³⁸

The edict further directed that cadets pursue their studies under the direct supervision of a Po Shih, a scholar of high rank. The Po Shih appointed to this important post was Ho Chu-fei, who, as first superintendent of the Imperial Military Academy, chose as the basic text for his young students an edition of Sun Tzu with ‘Lecture Notes’ by the well-known critic Shih Tzu-mei. These ‘Lecture Notes’ in the form of a commentary on Sun Tzu's verses have fortunately been preserved.

There is record of but one new edition of the Sun Tzu during the Yüan (Mongol) dynasty (1206-1367), and this, edited by P'an Yen-wang, has been lost. But after the Mongols had been driven out of Peking and the Ming (1368-1628) firmly established, interrupted work on the classics was resumed with great vigour; during this period of three centuries over fifty commentaries, interpretative studies, and critical essays were devoted to The Art of War. Of these, the most popular was the work of Chao Pen-hsüeh, which has been repeatedly reissued.

Sun Hsing-yen was the leading authority on Sun Tzu to emerge during the Ch'ing (Manchu) dynasty; it is his edition (in the preparation of which his friend Wu Jen-chi collaborated) which has been considered standard for almost two hundred years, and which is the basis for the present translation.

III

THE WARRING STATES

Confucius, the first and ultimately the most influential of China's philosophers, died in 479 b.c. Almost exactly a quarter of a century later the leaders of the Wei, Han, and Chao Clans attacked the ruler of Chin, defeated him at Ching Yang in 453, and parcelled out his domain among themselves.³⁹ Earl Chih was promptly decapitated, his family exterminated, and his skull, suitably embellished, presented to Wu Hsu of the Chao, who used it as a drinking cup. Thus inauspiciously began the age of the Warring States.

There was at this time a Son of Heaven, a member of the Chou house, whose authority outside the borders of the tiny enclave allowed him by the predatory rulers of the great states was non-existent. Indeed, for several centuries the kings of Chou had been purely symbolic figures whose principal functions were to regulate the calendar and perform the periodic ritual sacrifices upon which depended the harmonious relationship of Heaven, Earth, and Man.

The decline of the royal house had commenced with the transfer of the Chou capital from Shensi to the east in 770 b.c. Its feebleness a century and a half later is made strikingly evident in the formula used by the King to invest Duke Wen of Chin as Lord Protector (Pa):

Oh, my Uncle! Illustrious were the Kings Wen and Wu; they knew how to take care of their shining virtue, which rose with splendour on High (toward Heaven) and whose renown spread wide on earth. That is why the Sovereign of On-High made the Mandate succeed in the case of the Kings Wen and Wu. Have pity on me! Cause me to continue (the line of my ancestors); Me, the Unique Man and cause (me and my line) to be perpetually on the throne!⁴⁰

As of 450 b.c. there were eight large states in China, but Yen in the north and Yüeh in the east played no decisive part in the wars which raged almost without ceasing for the next two and a quarter centuries. The ‘Big Six’ were Ch'i, Ch'u, Ch'in, and ‘The Three Chins’—Wei, Han, and Chao. Additionally there were a dozen smaller principalities, all of which were to be absorbed by the larger states, who ate them up as systematically ‘as silkworms eat mulberry leaves’. In 447 b.c. Ch'u extinguished Ts'ai, a small state in today's Honan province; two years later she swallowed Ch'i (not the Ch'i mentioned above), and in 431 Chu. This process accelerated after 414 b.c.; in the next sixty-five years half a dozen small states disappeared from the historical scene. Occasionally the rulers managed to arrange recesses from the endemic wars which were produced by their insatiable ambitions. Such breathing spaces were necessary if for no other reason than to train the peasant armies periodically cut to pieces. It is extremely unlikely that many generals died in bed during the hundred and fifty years between 450 and 300 b.c.

This was one of the most chaotic periods in China's long history. The forested hills, the reed-bordered lakes, the many swamps and marshes provided hiding places for the bands of robbers and cut-throats who raided villages, kidnapped travellers, and exacted toll from merchants unlucky enough to fall into their hands. Many of these outlaws were peasants who had been forced into brigandage to survive. Others were escaped criminals, deserters from the army, and disgraced officials. Altogether they constituted a formidable challenge to the so-called forces of law and order. The vendettas of the great families were conducted by bands of professional swordsmen recruited from the lower ranks of a dissolving hereditary aristocracy.

Some individuals took vigorous exception to the amoral standards of the times. The most important of these was Mo Ti, or Mo Tzu (c. 479-381 b.c.), who denounced the crime and futility of the wars to which the rulers of his age devoted their energies. ‘Suppose’, he said, ‘soldier hosts arise’:

If it is in winter it will be too cold, and if in summer it will be too hot. So it should be done neither in winter nor in summer. But if it is in spring it will take people away from sowing and planting, and if in fall it will take them from reaping and harvesting. Should they be taken away in any of these seasons, innumerable people would die of hunger and cold. And, when the army sets out, the bamboo, arrows, plumed standards, house tents, armor, shields, and sword hilts will break and rot in innumerable quantities and never come back. Again with the spears, lances, swords, poniards, chariots and carts: these will break and rot in innumerable quantities and never come back. Innumerable horses and oxen will start out fat and come back lean, or will die and never come back at all. An innumerable people will die because their food will be cut off and cannot be supplied on account of the great distance of the roads, while other innumerable people will get sick and die from the constant danger, the irregularities of eating and drinking, and the extremes of hunger and over-eating. Then the army will be lost in large numbers or in its entirety; in either case the number will be innumerable.⁴¹

Mo Ti condemned aggressive war in uncompromising terms:

If a man kills an innocent man, steals his clothing and his spear and sword, his offence is graver than breaking into a stable and stealing an ox or a horse. The injury is greater, the offence is graver, and the crime of a higher degree. Any man of sense knows that it is wrong, knows that it is unrighteous. But when murder is committed in attacking a country it is not considered wrong; it is applauded and called righteous. Can this be considered as knowing what is righteous and what is unrighteous? When one man kills another man it is considered unrighteous and he is punished by death. Then by the same sign when a man kills ten others, his crime will be ten times greater, and should be punished by death ten times. Similarly one who kills a hundred men should be punished a hundred times more heavily. … If a man calls black black if it is seen on a small scale, but calls black white when it is seen on a large scale, then he is one who cannot tell black from white. … Similarly if a small crime is considered crime, but a big crime such as attacking another country is applauded as a righteous act, can this be said to be knowing the difference between righteous and unrighteous?⁴²

This philosophy was not particularly popular with Warring States rulers who were actuated by the imperatives of power rather than by the adjurations of moralists. But these sovereigns were by no means uncivilized. Most of them were educated men who lived luxuriously. In their courts boredom was banished by well-equipped harems, teams of dancing girls, musicians, acrobats, and the expert chefs who staffed the kitchens. The itinerant sophists who with their disciples roamed from one capital to another, the more successful in carriages, those less so on foot, were welcomed and entertained at these courts.

Markets flourished, and in spite of chronic disorder, interstate commerce as well. Traders and merchants made fat profits. In Lin Tzu, the capital of Ch'i, there were in the early fourth century b.c. seventy thousand households. If ten ‘mouths’ (a reasonable figure) be allowed per household, the population must have been almost three-quarters of a million. This city, then the largest and probably the richest in Chin, derived its wealth from trade. There those who came to buy salt, silk, iron, and dried fish found entertainment in restaurants, music halls, and brothels and gambled on dog races, cock fights, and football games. But the inarticulate peasants, who comprised probably 90 per cent. of the population, enjoyed none of these amenities or luxuries. Their lot was toil and war, to labour in the fields, to obey their superiors, and to keep their mouths shut.

This society was controlled by a legal code of frightening severity. Several thousand crimes were punishable by death or mutilation. Castration, branding, slicing off the nose, chopping off the toes or feet, cutting leg tendons, or breaking knee caps were commonly inflicted. Nor were such punishments restricted to the lower classes of society; great officers sometimes suffered them. Thus there was at least in theory equitable administration of the law. But those whose feet had been severed undoubtedly derived small consolation from contemplation of the purely academic aspects of this Draconian code.

The political environment gave ample scope to the talents of self-styled experts in every field and particularly to professional strategists. Between 450 and 300 b.c. successive generations were decimated with methodical regularity and war became a ‘fundamental occupation’.⁴³ The pretence of conforming to the idyllic code of morality reputedly exemplified in the reigns of the Sage kings had long since been abandoned. Diplomacy was based on bribery, fraud, and deceit. Espionage and intrigue flourished. Nor was treasonable conduct regarded as abnormal by ambitious generals who changed allegiance or ministers of state who were willingly corrupted.

The career of the famous soldier Wu Ch'i reflects the standards of his time. Born and raised in Wei State he sought military office in Lu. To allay the Duke's doubts of his loyalty, he killed his wife because she was a native of Wei. Some time thereafter jealous officials brought false accusations against him. He caused a number of them to be murdered and fled to Wey, where he offered his services to the Marquis. The Prime Minister described him as covetous and addicted to debauchery but an expert general. The Marquis hired him and made him Protector of the West River. Later he left Wey and was employed by King Tao of Ch'u, who appointed him Prime Minister in 384 b.c. He reorganized and modernized the state administration, thereby gaining many enemies. When King Tao was assassinated in 381 b.c. Wu Ch'i was executed.

This dynamic age demanded practical solutions to the problems of politics and war, and hundreds of scholars who wandered from one state to another were eager to peddle ideas to rulers ‘anxious over the perilous condition of their countries and the weakness of their armies’. Sovereigns competed for the advice of battalions of professional talkers, who, in ‘interminable discussions’, captivated kings, dukes, and great men with arguments of ‘confusing diversity’.⁴⁴ These itinerant Machiavellis were intellectual gamblers. When their advice turned out to be good they frequently attained high position; if poor, they were unceremoniously pickled, sawn in half, boiled, minced, or torn apart by chariots.

But rewards were sufficiently lucrative to induce many men to devote their talents to government, diplomacy, and military affairs, and sovereigns whose ambition was to ‘roll up All-under-Heaven like a mat’ and ‘tie up the four seas in a bag’ gave them sympathetic hearing.

The corrosive influence of this new class upon feudal ideas and institutions was of the first importance. The wandering scholars were bound by no lasting loyalties, were attached by no sentiment of patriotism to the states they served and were not restricted by any feeling of ancient chivalry. They proposed and carried out schemes of the blackest treachery. Frequently they secretly served two princes at once, playing off the policy of the one against the other. Moving from kingdom to kingdom, always with some eloquent and intricate scheme to propose, they fought the particularism of the old feudal aristocracy, and envisaged plans to reduce the whole empire to the obedience of the sovereign they served. This was the bait they held out to their temporary masters; it was no longer hegemony, but empire, which had become the aim of state policy.⁴⁵

The desires of these princes were identical with those of whom Plutarch wrote that they merely made use of the words peace and war ‘like current coin to serve their occasions as expediency suggested’. These occasions could be served in the China of that time only by intrigue or war. And war, an integral part of the power politics of the age, had become ‘a matter of vital importance to the state, the province of life or death, the road to survival or ruin’. To be waged successfully, it required a coherent strategic and tactical theory and a practical doctrine governing intelligence, planning, command, operational, and administrative procedures. The author of The Thirteen Chapters was the first man to provide such a theory and such a doctrine.

The trend toward the growth of large states at the expense of their smaller and weaker neighbours was a constant feature of Chinese historical development and was to culminate in 221 b.c. in the establishment of a monolithic state by the First Universal Emperor.

During the period with which we are concerned, many factors contributed to the concentration of political power in the hands of an ever-decreasing number of rulers. Of these, the development of an iron technology was perhaps of unique importance.

Iron was known in China before 500 b.c., but it was extremely rare and valuable because controlled methods of smelting had not yet been devised. The swords of King Ho-lü of Wu were famous in Chinese legend; renowned Japanese sword makers of later ages traced the origins of their craft directly to Kan Chiang, Mo Yeh and their son Ch'ih Pi, whose lives, art, and the blades they forged have provided material for many folk tales and more recently for scholarly essays on the subject of iron founding in ancient China.⁴⁶ The forging of these fabulous blades was accompanied by symbolic human sacrifice; the process was ritualistic and known only to the initiated.

Kan Chiang, from the country of Wu, had the same teacher as Mo Yeh. Together they made swords. Ho-lü, King of Wu, ordered two swords to be made; one was called Kan Chiang and the other Mo Yeh. Mo Yeh was the wife of Kan Chiang. Kan Chiang therefore made the sword after collecting the iron in the five mountains and the gold (chin?) in the six directions. He examined the sky and the earth; yin and yang shone together. A hundred shen came down to observe; the steam came down; but the iron and the gold did not melt. Kan Chiang could not understand the reason. Mo Yeh said to him: ‘You are a good founder and the King orders you to make swords. Three months have gone by, and you cannot manage to finish them; what are your ideas on the matter?’ Kan Chiang answered: ‘I do not understand the reason.’ Mo Yeh said: ‘Then the transformation of divine (shen) things is in need of a person to carry it out. Now then, in making the swords what person is needed for achieving the work?’ Then Kan Chiang said: ‘In ancient times my Master cast the metal. The gold and the iron did not melt and he with his wife entered the furnace; then it was done. Until now the succeeding (founders) have ascended the mountains, making the casting with perfumed robes of white hempen cloth, daring then to throw the gold in the furnace. Now I make the sword on the mountain and no such change takes place.’ Mo Yeh answered: ‘The Master knew the need of melting a body in order to achieve the work. What difficulty have I (to sacrifice myself)?’ Then Kan Chiang's wife cut off her hair, and cut her nails, and threw them in the furnace. She ordered three hundred boys and maidens to work the bellows, and the gold and iron melted to make the swords. The male sword was called Kan Chiang and the female sword Mo Yeh. … Kan Chiang hid the male sword and took the female one and presented it to the King.⁴⁷

It was not, however, for almost one hundred years that Kan Chiang's secret became common property, then suddenly we find rapid development in the technique of making iron. The stages of this, as yet not clearly defined, are associated with advances in metallurgy, the introduction of leather bellows, and improvement in the design and construction of furnaces. By about 400 b.c. individual ironmasters were employing hundreds of men and in some of the states this industry soon became a monopoly of the government.⁴⁸ Not long after, a process for making low-grade steel was perfected in Ch'u and Han, where ‘white blades’ were made. The steel-tipped lances of Ch'u were ‘sharp as a bee's sting’.⁴⁹

The effects of this break-through were soon apparent. Iron implements for agriculture and weapons of uniform high quality could be produced cheaply and in quantity, and it was natural that rulers establish foundries and arsenals and assume the prerogative (hitherto that of their vassals) of equipping the new standing armies and the conscripts. The ruler of the ‘Kuo’ (State) was thus enabled to assert himself more effectively than when he had not enjoyed a monopoly of weapons.

Large-scale hydraulic works, wall building, registration of the populace, and tax collection required an ever-expanding bureaucracy. Conscription and direction of the labour forces needed to carry out the grandiose schemes of the rulers, who attempted to outdo one another in the magnificence of their palaces, terraces, parks, and towers, posed complicated administrative problems. As these were solved a science of organization was created.

A parallel development took place in the military sphere in which, no less than in other proliferating areas of state activity, a high degree of administrative and directive competence was essential. By the middle of the fifth century b.c. large armies, which with porters and carters numbered several hundred thousand, embarked on distant campaigns which had necessarily to be planned and supported on a rational basis. When not campaigning, the army laboured (as it does in China today) on public projects.

This was an expanding society in which intellectuals, artists, technicians, and administrators were able to employ their talents to a remarkable degree. The chronicles which record the great natural disasters, wars, assassinations of princes and ministers and usurpations occasionally remark laconically that All-under-Heaven was in chaos. This phrase is appropriate to describe the explosive age during which the last vestiges of the ancient structure were being cast aside. The hordes of experts, sophists, and disputatious scholars who offered to hard-bitten rulers and cynical ministers advice on every conceivable subject kept the intellectual world in constant ferment. Later the Legalist Han Fei Tzu was to denounce the double-faced scholars who dwelt in caves, ‘pursued private studies’, ‘engaged in intrigues and elaborated unorthodox views’.⁵⁰ But we may safely surmise that by no means all these intellectual entrepreneurs dwelt in caves.

Confucius had wandered from one state to another in a vain attempt to persuade the rulers of his time to forsake the struggle for power and return to the enlightened path of the Sage kings. But most men of this later age realized that peregrinations devoted to the promotion of pacific and ethical objectives were a waste of time. The most pressing problems were those of practical statecraft; of internal administration and foreign policy. The crucial aspects of the latter were then the same as they have always been: to preserve and enrich the state and enhance its power and influence at the expense of enemies either actual or potential.

Consequently, while moralists may frequently have been unemployed, strategists on the whole lived comfortably—so long as their advice turned out to be good. The author of The Art of War was one of these men, and even though he did not in fact find a patron in King Ho-lü of Wu, as Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien says, he must somewhere have found a receptive ear. Otherwise his words would have died as did those of most of his less original contemporaries.

IV

WAR IN SUN TZU'S AGE

We can appreciate the originality of Sun Tzu's thought only if we are aware of the qualitative differences which distinguished warfare of the fifth and fourth centuries from that of the earlier period. Until about 500 b.c. war was in a sense ritualistic. Seasonal campaigns were conducted in accordance with a code generally accepted. Hostilities were prohibited during the months devoted to planting and harvesting. In winter the peasants hibernated in their mud huts; it was too cold to fight. In summer it was too hot. In theory at least, war was interdicted during the months of mourning which followed the death of a feudal lord.⁵¹ In battle it was forbidden to strike elderly men or further injure an enemy previously wounded. The human-hearted ruler did not ‘massacre cities’, ‘ambush armies’, or ‘keep the army over the season’, nor did a righteous prince stoop to deceit; he did not take unfair advantage of his adversary.⁵²

When King Chuang of Ch'u laid siege to the capital of Sung in 594 b.c. his army began to run short of provisions. To Tzu-fan, his Minister of War, he said: ‘If we exhaust these supplies without reducing the city we are going to withdraw and return home.’ He then ordered Tzu-fan to climb the ramp thrown up against the wall to observe the besieged. The Prince of Sung sent his minister, Hua Yuan, to the mound to intercept him, and the following conversation ensued:

Tzu-fan said, ‘How are things with your state?’ Hua Yuan said, ‘We are exhausted! We exchange our children and eat them, splitting and cooking the bones.’

Tzu-fan said, ‘Alas! Extreme straits indeed! However, I have heard that in besieged states they gag their horses when they give them grain and send out the fat ones to meet the enemy. Now, how is it that you, Sir, are so frank?’

Hua Yuan said, ‘I have heard that the superior man, seeing another's distress, has compassion on him; while the mean man, seeing another's distress, rejoices in it. I saw that you seemed to be a superior man, and that is why I was so frank.’

Tzu-fan said, ‘It is so. May you exert yourself. Our army has only seven days' rations.’

Tzu-fan reported to King Chuang. King Chuang said, ‘How are they?’

Tzu-fan said, ‘They are exhausted. They exchange children and eat them, splitting and cooking the bones.’

King Chuang said, ‘Alas! Extreme straits indeed. Now all we have to do is take them and return.’

Tzu-fan said, ‘We cannot do it. I have already told them that our army for its part has only seven days' rations.’

King Chuang was angry and said, ‘I sent you to observe them. Why did you tell them?’

Tzu-fan said, ‘If a state as small as Sung still has a subject who does not practice deceit, how can Ch'u lack them? This is why I told him.’

King Chuang said, ‘Nevertheless we shall presently just take them and return.’

Tzu-fan said, ‘Let Your Highness stay here; I will just go home, if I may.’

The King said, ‘If you return, leaving me, with whom shall I stay here? I shall return as you wish.’ Whereupon he went back with his army.

The superior man approves their making peace themselves. Hua Yuan told Tzu-fan the truth and succeeded thereby in raising the siege and keeping intact the fortune of the two states.⁵³

Philosophers and kings distinguished between righteous and unrighteous war; an enlightened prince was morally justified in attacking ‘a darkened and rustic country’, in the emergence of professional officers from other than noble families.

The battles of ancient China were primitive mêlées which usually produced no decisive results. Ordinarily the two sides encamped opposite one another for several days while the diviners studied the auguries and the respective commanders conducted propitiatory sacrifices. When the auspicious moment selected by the soothsayers arrived, the entire array, whose roars shook the heavens, threw itself precipitately upon the enemy. A local decision was produced speedily. Either the attacker was repulsed and allowed to withdraw, or he broke through the defender's formations, killed those still inclined to offer active resistance, pursued the flying remnants for half a mile, picked up anything of value, and returned to his own camp or capital. Victory was rarely exploited—limited operations were undertaken to achieve limited objectives.

Shortly before 500 b.c. the concepts which had moderated warfare began to change. War became more ferocious. A battle in 518 b.c. between the armies of Wu and Ch'u provides a macabre illustration. Here the Viscount of Wu ordered three thousand condemned men to line themselves up in front of his formation where in the full sight of the opposing host they committed suicide by cutting their own throats. The Ch'u army and its allied troops fled in terror.⁵⁴

When Sun Tzu appeared on the scene, the feudal structure, in the ultimate stages of disintegration, was being replaced by an entirely different type of society in which there was much more opportunity for a talented individual. This process was gradual, but in every sphere, including the military, originality and enterprise received their rewards.

As the temporary levies of earlier days, both unreliable and inefficient, were no longer adequate, the great states formed standing armies, officered by professionals. Conscription of peasants was introduced; the new armies were composed of disciplined and well-trained troops plus conscripts whose ages ranged from sixteen to sixty. These armies were spear-headed by élite or shock troops specially selected for their courage, skill, discipline, and loyalty. The first such formations appeared about 500 b.c. and attracted enough attention for Mo Tzu to observe that King Ho-lü had trained his troops for seven years and that his élite corps was able to march three hundred li (about a hundred miles) without resting! The ‘Guards’ of Ch'u wore armour and helmets and carried crossbows with fifteen feathered arrows, extra arrow heads, swords and a three days' supply of parched rice. At about this time light troops also appeared. With standing armies incorporating these elements, operations were no longer confined to particular periods of the year. The army in being, able to take the field at short notice, was a constant threat to potential enemies.

The day of the brave, or knight, whose fame derived from his individual prowess was over. Preliminary combats between individuals, a feature common to all feudal societies, did occasionally take place. But some generals refused to put up with this.

When Wu Ch'i fought against Ch'in, there was an officer who before battle was joined was unable to control his ardour. He advanced and took a pair of heads and returned. Wu Ch'i ordered him to be beheaded.

The Army Commissioner admonished him, saying: ‘This is a talented officer; you should not behead him.’

Wu Ch'i replied: ‘I am confident he is an officer of talent, but he is disobedient.’

Thereupon he beheaded him.⁵⁵

Battles had become directed efforts; the valiant no longer advanced unsupported, nor did the coward flee.

Elements of the new armies, capable of co-ordinated movement in accordance with detailed plans, were responsive to systematic signals. The science (or art) of tactics was born. The enemy, engaged by the cheng (orthodox) force, was defeated by the ch'i (unorthodox, unique, rare, wonderful) force, or forces; the normal pattern was a holding or fixing effort by the cheng while ch'i groups attacked the deep flanks and rear. Distraction assumed great importance and the enemy's communications became a primary target.

Although many interesting and important questions relating to details of tactics cannot be answered, we know that time and space factors were nicely calculated. Convergence of several columns upon a selected objective at a predetermined time was a technique the Chinese had mastered in Sun Tzu's day.

The concept of a ‘general's staff’ originated during the Warring States. Staffs included numerous specialists: weather forecasters, map makers, commissary officers, and engineers to plan tunnelling and mining operations. Others were experts on river crossing, amphibious operations, inundating, attack by fire, and the use of smoke.

Because the core of the army consisted of trained professionals and represented a considerable investment, special attention had to be paid to morale, to feeding the troops well, to rewards and punishments clearly fixed and equitably administered. Thus the spirit of the army was nurtured and at the behest of its commander it would go through fire or water. Soldiers who distinguished themselves were rewarded and promoted. This slowly but inexorably contributed to undermining the position of the hereditary aristocracy in the army.

The doctrine of collective responsibility in battle was probably first developed about this time. Commanders who retreated without orders were executed. If a section retired and its leader remained to fight, the four who had abandoned him were summarily beheaded. If a brigade or column commander withdrew without orders, he lost his head. Still, the promulgation of military codes however severe was a step forward. And while some generals enforced these more stringently than others it was recognized that arbitrary terrorism could not be relied on to produce the will to fight. Just as the professionalization of the army had opened the door to talented men, so to some extent it also inhibited generals and officers from inflicting unreasonably cruel punishments or unnecessary hardships.

Naturally, all generals of the fourth century b.c. did not attain the position by reason of their abilities. But by this time it was possible for an able man to rise to command rank without respect to aristocratic origin and to receive at a ceremonial investiture the battle-axe which symbolized his status as commander-in-chief and conferred upon him supreme authority outside the capital. The administration of the army and its operational employment were from this moment his responsibility; when the general crossed the borders there were some orders of the ruler which he might ignore. But with his subordinates the general was amenable to the military law.

Technical improvements made their contribution to the revolution of Chinese warfare. The introduction of the crossbow and of cutting weapons of high-quality iron capable of taking and holding an edge were especially significant. Long before the crossbow appeared, the composite reflex bow had become common.⁵⁶ The crossbow, a Chinese invention of the early fourth century b.c., fired heavy arrows which would have made collanders of Greek or Macedonian shields. It is likely that trained crossbowmen finally put the chariot out of business.

The armies familiar to Sun Tzu were composed of swordsmen, archers, spearmen (or halberdiers), crossbowmen, and chariots. Cavalry did not appear until some time later, but mounted men riding without saddles or stirrups were used as scouts and messengers. Foot soldiers used two types of spear, one about 18 feet long, one about 9. These spears combined a thrusting point with a hooking or slicing blade. Spears were not used as missile weapons because in the crossbow the Chinese possessed a short-range, flat-trajectory weapon of great accuracy and tremendous striking power.

Field operations were often conducted from fortified camps designed like a Chinese city: a square enclosed by tamped earthen walls surrounded by a moat. Intersecting streets or parades, running north to south and east to west, provided for interlocking bands of fire. In the centre the commander-in-chief's banner flew over his headquarters, which was encircled by the decorated tents of his advisers and the élite swordsmen of his personal guard.

Before the army marched from its camp it assembled and listened to the exhortations of the general, who thundered the righteousness of the cause and excoriated the barbaric enemy. Officers feasted and exchanged vows over bloodied war drums. While troops drank wine, their ardour was aroused by gyrating sword dancers.

A Chinese army of the Warring States in battle array was an impressive spectacle as its ranks stood firm and scores of lavishly embroidered flags and banners whipped in the wind. These, decorated with figures of tigers, birds, dragons, snakes, phoenixes, and tortoises, marked the command post of the commander-in-chief behind the centre and those of the assistant generals who commanded the wings. Constant manœuvring distracted the enemy and provided opportunities for ch'i operations against his deep flanks and rear.

The organization described by Sun Tzu permitted considerable flexibility in march formations, while articulation made possible rapid deployment into those suitable for battle. The five-man squad or section could obviously march either in rank or file. What was the distribution of weapons? Were crossbowmen and archers formed into separate contingents or were they organic to the section composed of a ‘pair’ and a ‘trio’? These terms suggest they were, but from the scanty information available it appears that by the time of the battle of Ma Ling (341 b.c.) they were separately grouped.

What was the effective range of bows and crossbows? Here again there are no reliable data; the figures given in the records must be viewed with suspicion. It is said, for instance, that the crossbow had a range of six hundred paces. This is a gross exaggeration if lethal range is the criterion. Striking power was measured in terms of how many shields an arrow could pierce at distances of several hundred paces, but as the sort of shield used for such testing is not precisely described this fact is of little value. Nevertheless, these were powerful weapons.

That siege methods had reached a refined stage is attested by several surviving fragments of Mo Tzu's works in which various types of special apparatus for assaulting walled cities are mentioned. Scaling ladders had been in use for some centuries before his time. Movable multi-platformed towers which could be placed against city walls are referred to in The Book of Songs, as are mobile protective ‘tortoises’ designed to shield tunnellers.⁵⁷ We find additional information on sieges in The Book of Lord Shang. In a besieged city the entire population was mobilized and three armies created. These consisted of able-bodied men who with abundant provisions and sharp weapons awaited the enemy; able-bodied women who erected earthworks and dug pits and moats, and children and old and feeble men and women who fed, watered, and guarded the livestock.⁵⁸

We find in the Sun Tzu a doctrine relating to tactical reconnaissance, to observation, and to flank patrolling, all measures designed to ensure security on the march and in camp. Probing and testing the enemy was an essential preliminary to combat.

Thus, by the beginning of the fourth century b.c., or even some decades earlier, war in China had reached a mature form; a form which indeed was not, except for employment of cavalry, to be significantly altered for many hundreds of years. At this time the Chinese possessed weapons and were masters of offensive and defensive tactics and techniques which would have enabled them to cause Alexander a great deal more trouble than did the Greeks, the Persians, or the Indians.

V

SUN TZU ON WAR

The opening verse of Sun Tzu's classic is the basic clue to his philosophy. War is a grave concern of the state; it must be thoroughly studied. Here is recognition—and for the first time—that armed strife is not a transitory aberration but a recurrent conscious act and therefore susceptible to rational analysis.

Sun Tzu believed that the moral strength and intellectual faculty of man were decisive in war, and that if these were properly applied war could be waged with certain success. Never to be undertaken thoughtlessly or recklessly, war was to be preceded by measures designed to make it easy to win. The master conqueror frustrated his enemy's plans and broke up his alliances. He created cleavages between sovereign and minister, superiors and inferiors, commanders and subordinates. His spies and agents were active everywhere, gathering information, sowing dissension, and nurturing subversion. The enemy was isolated and demoralized; his will to resist broken. Thus without battle his army was conquered, his cities taken and his state overthrown. Only when the enemy could not be overcome by these means was there recourse to armed force, which was to be applied so that victory was gained:

• (a) in the shortest possible time;
• (b) at the least possible cost in lives and effort;
• (c) with infliction on the enemy of the fewest possible casualties.

National unity was deemed by Sun Tzu to be an essential requirement of victorious war. This could be attained only under a government which was devoted to the people's welfare and did not oppress them. Sun Hsing-yen was justified in observing that Sun Tzu's theories were based on ‘benevolence and righteousness’.

By relating war to the immediate political context, that is to alliances or the lack of them, and to unity and stability on the home front and high morale in the army as contrasted with disunity in the enemy country and low morale in his army, Sun Tzu attempted to establish a realistic basis for a rational appraisal of relative power. His perception that mental, moral, physical, and circumstantial factors operate in war demonstrates a remarkable acuity. Few military writers, including those most esteemed in the West, have stated this proposition as clearly as did Sun Tzu some twenty-three hundred years ago. Although Sun Tzu may not have been the first to realize that armed force is the ultimate arbiter of inter-state conflicts, he was the first to put the physical clash in proper perspective.

Sun Tzu was aware of the economic implications of war. His references to inflated prices, rates of wastage, difficulties of supply, and the inevitable burdens laid upon the people show that he recognized the importance of these factors which until fairly recently have been frequently neglected.

Sun Tzu appreciated the difference between what we today define as ‘national strategy’ and ‘military strategy’. This comes out in his discussion of the assessment of relative strengths in chapter i. Here he names five ‘matters’ to be deliberated in the temple councils. These are human (morale and generalship), physical (terrain and weather), and doctrinal. Only if superiority in these is clearly indicated did the council proceed to its calculations relative to numerical strengths (which Sun Tzu did not deem decisive); quality of troops; discipline; equity in the administration of rewards and punishments; and training.

Finally, this ancient writer did not conceive the object of military action to be the annihilation of the enemy's army, the destruction of his cities, and the wastage of his countryside. ‘Weapons are ominous tools to be used only when there is no alternative.’

Tzu-lu, a disciple of Confucius, once discussed war with the Master:

Tzu-lu said, Supposing you had command of the Three Hosts, whom would you take to help you? The Master said, The man who was ready to beard a tiger or rush a river without caring whether he lived or died—that sort of man I should not take. I should certainly take someone who approached difficulties with due caution and who preferred to succeed by strategy.⁵⁹

All warfare is based on deception. A skilled general must be master of the complementary arts of simulation and dissimulation; while creating shapes to confuse and delude the enemy he conceals his true dispositions and ultimate intent. When capable he feigns incapacity; when near he makes it appear that he is far away; when far away, that he is near. Moving as intangibly as a ghost in the starlight, he is obscure, inaudible. His primary target is the mind of the opposing commander; the victorious situation, a product of his creative imagination. Sun Tzu realized that an indispensable preliminary to battle was to attack the mind of the enemy.

The expert approaches his objective indirectly. By selection of a devious and distant route he may march a thousand li without opposition and take his enemy unaware. Such a commander prizes above all freedom of action. He abhors a static situation and therefore attacks cities only when there is no alternative. Sieges, wasteful both of lives and time, entail abdication of the initiative.

The wise general cannot be manipulated. He may withdraw, but when he does, moves so swiftly that he cannot be overtaken. His retirements are designed to entice the enemy, to unbalance him, and to create a situation favourable for a decisive counter-stroke. They are, paradoxically, offensive. He conducts a war of movement; he marches with divine swiftness; his blows fall like thunderbolts ‘from the nine-layered heavens’. He creates conditions certain to produce a quick decision; for him victory is the object of war, not lengthy operations however brilliantly conducted. He knows that prolonged campaigns drain the treasury and exhaust the troops; prices rise, the people are hungry: ‘No country has ever benefited from a protracted war.’

The expert commander strikes only when the situation assures victory. To create such a situation is the ultimate responsibility of generalship. Before he gives battle the superior general causes the enemy to disperse. When the enemy disperses and attempts to defend everywhere he is weak everywhere, and at the selected points many will be able to strike his few.

But vulnerability is not measured solely in physical terms. An opposing commander may be vacillating, rash, impulsive, arrogant, stubborn, or easily deceived. Possibly some elements of his army are poorly trained, disaffected, cowardly, or ineptly commanded. He may have selected a poor position. He may be over-extended, his supplies low, his troops exhausted. These conditions constitute voids and provide opportunity for an imaginative general to devise an advantageous course of action.

The same factors determine the ‘shape’ of the opposing armies. The prudent commander bases his plans on his antagonist's ‘shape’. ‘Shape him’, Sun Tzu says. Continuously concerned with observing and probing his opponent, the wise general at the same time takes every possible measure designed to prevent the enemy from ‘shaping’ him.

The actions of the general's tactical instruments—the normal, direct or cheng force and the extraordinary, indirect or ch'i force—are reciprocal; their effects are mutually reproductive. We may define the cheng element as fixing and the ch'i as flanking or encircling, or, again, as the force(s) of distraction and the force(s) of decision. Their blows are correlated. The cheng and the ch'i are compared to two interlocked rings: ‘Who can tell where one begins and the other ends?’ Their possible permutations are infinite; the cheng effort may be transformed into a ch'i, a ch'i into a cheng. Thus we may redefine a ch'i attack as one made where a decision is speedily attainable at least cost, in an area characterized by voids or fissures in the enemy's defences.

A ch'i operation is always unexpected, strange, or unorthodox; a cheng, more obvious. When Sun Tzu said to engage with the cheng but to win with the ch'i he was implying that distractive effects are necessary to ensure that decisive blows may be struck where the enemy is least prepared and where he does not anticipate them. It is misleading, however, to limit the connotation of these terms by identification with tactical battle groupings only. Ch'i and cheng operations may be launched as well on strategic levels.

Sun Tzu sees the business of a general to consist, in part, of creating changes and of manipulating them to his advantage. The excellent general weighs the situation before he moves. He does not blunder aimlessly into baited traps. He is prudent, but not hesitant. He realizes that there are ‘some roads not to be followed, some armies not to be attacked, some cities not to be besieged, some positions not to be contested and some commands of the sovereign not to be obeyed’. He takes calculated risks but never needless ones. He does not ‘beard a tiger or rush a river without caring whether he lives or dies’. When he sees opportunity he acts swiftly and decisively.

Sun Tzu's theory of adaptability to existing situations is an important aspect of his thought. Just as water adapts itself to the conformation of the ground, so in war one must be flexible; he must often adapt his tactics to the enemy situation. This is not in any sense a passive concept, for if the enemy is given enough rope he will frequently hang himself. Under certain conditions one yields a city, sacrifices a portion of his force, or gives up ground in order to gain a more valuable objective. Such yielding therefore masks a deeper purpose, and is but another aspect of the intellectual pliancy which distinguishes the expert in war.

Sun Tzu recognizes the hazards and the advantages of weather. He is equally concerned with the effect of ground. The general who can assess the value of ground manœuvres his enemy into dangerous terrain and keeps clear of it himself. He chooses the ground on which he wishes to engage, draws his enemy to it, and there gives battle. To Sun Tzu, a general unable to use ground properly was unfit to command.⁶⁰

Sun Tzu's chapter on secret operations, as pertinent today as when he composed it, requires little elaboration except possibly to point out that he was fully aware of the necessity for compartmentation and the need for multi-level operations. Nor should his emphasis on doubled agents escape our attention. Fifth columns were as common in ancient China as in the Greek world and Sun Tzu takes account of them. The West has had considerable experience of this technique in recent years and our efforts to combat it cannot be described as entirely successful. Possibly Tu Mu's analysis of the types of men most susceptible to subversion is still worthy of examination.

With this essay, which horrified many orthodox Confucians, Sun Tzu closed his Art of War.

VI

SUN TZU AND MAO TSE-TUNG

Mao Tse-Tung has been strongly influenced by Sun Tzu's thought. This is apparent in his works which deal with military strategy and tactics and is particularly evident in On Guerrilla Warfare, On the Protracted War, and Strategic Problems of China's Revolutionary War; it may also be traced in other essays less familiar to Western readers. Some years before Chairman Mao took his writing-brush in hand in Yenan, Red commanders had applied Sun Tzu's precepts to their operations in Kiangsi and Fukien, where between 1930 and 1934 they inflicted repeated defeats on Chiang K'ai-shek's Nationalists whose object it was to exterminate the Communists.

Mao has described his youth as punctuated by violent quarrels with an overbearing father; as a boy, he discovered an ally in his mother, whose policy of ‘indirect attack’⁶¹ appealed to him. Of his early schooling, he once remarked that it served one useful purpose—it gave him sufficient command of the basic classical literature to provide quotations as ammunition for his frequent skirmishes.

The classical canon thus found limited favour with Mao. What interests him most were ‘the romances of old China and especially stories of rebellions’.⁶² Among others, he read and read again the Shui Hu Chuan (translated by Pearl Buck as All Men Are Brothers) and San Kuo (translated by Brewitt-Taylor as Romance of the Three Kingdoms) and was much influenced by them'.⁶³ The San Kuo recounts battles, stratagems, and deceptions of such famous Three Kingdoms figures as Chu-ko Liang, Ts'ao Ts'ao, Lu Sun, Ssŭ-ma I, and Liu Pei, each of whom was a lifelong student of Sun Tzu's classic. From these stories Mao absorbed much of the military lore of his country.

During five years at the Hunan Provincial Normal School in Ch'ang-sha, Mao read in translation works of the most important Western political thinkers, but it was to the history of his country that he constantly returned. The T'aip'ing rebellion (1851-64) has always been one of Mao's favourite subjects and Li Hsiu-ch'en, the most competent leader the rebels produced, was one of his early heroes. Li, a studious man, had a remarkable flair for command. He and other T'aip'ing generals were well versed in the ancient military writers, whose precepts they turned to good account. The rebel commanders:

always selected and advanced to the spot where the resistance was the weakest. They knew how to avoid or by-pass a strong defense and to assault a weak spot. … They knew how to make a detour in order to attack the rear or flank of the enemy's position and how to confuse the enemy by attacking at one point to divert his attention while actually advancing on another. … They knew how to spy on their enemies and the activities of their fifth columnists usually preceded a formal military operation.⁶⁴

From the T'aip'ings Mao also inherited ideas which were later reflected in his agrarian policies as well as in the rules of behaviour he incorporated into the ‘Ten Commandments’ of the Red Army.

Mao apparently observed that Sun Tzu's precepts are readily adaptable to the conduct of war of either the hot or cold variety, and although it was to be many years before he had the opportunity to apply them in the cold war against foreign ‘imperialists’, he had not long to wait for a chance to use them with startling effect against Chiang K'ai-shek in a hot one.

Shortly after the Nanch'ang uprising in August 1927 Mao was proscribed by the Nanking government and a price put on his head. In the early winter of that year, penniless but still confident, he arrived at the mountain base of Ching Kang Shan in the Hunan-Kiangsi borderlands. Here he was elected commander of the Red Army, which then consisted of a few thousand half-starved, miserably equipped men who had survived the Nanch'ang affair. After considerable persuasion two locally powerful bandit chieftains agreed to join forces with the Communists. These three ill-assorted groups, armed with bows and arrows, spears, antique fowling pieces, several hundred rifles, and half a dozen machine guns, formed the nucleus of the Red Army. In the spring of 1928 Chu Teh arrived at the mountain stronghold with several thousand men, most of whom were better armed, and shortly thereafter two half-hearted Nationalist attempts on the base area were repulsed.

Gradually these two men began to mould an army. Both insisted that the peasant volunteers be treated with decency and justice. Physical brutality was outlawed, as were the discriminatory practices and favouritism which chronically plagued the Manchu, Republican, and Kuomintang military establishments. Both Mao and Chu Teh (who took command of the army at this time) realized the need for a literate and well-indoctrinated force. This concern with morale, traceable in part at least to Sun Tzu's teachings, was to pay handsome dividends, for it was the major factor which preserved the Red Army after the disastrous reverses suffered in Hunan in August and early September 1930.

The birth date of the type of strategy and tactics associated with the name of Mao Tse-tung was 13 September 1930. Until that time Mao and Chu Teh had been responsive to the directives they received from the Central Committee of the Party headed by Li Li-san. These called for concentration of Red strength against cities, whose masses Li—in strict obedience to Marxist-Leninist revolutionary dogma—conceived to be the only proper base for the eventual communization of China.⁶⁵

Here it is not necessary to describe in detail the events which led to the repudiation of the Li Li-san line by the top field command. Suffice it to say that August and September 1930 were the most critical months in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. After assaulting Ch'angsha and holding the city for a few days, the Reds under P'eng Te-huai were driven out. Two hundred miles to the east, at Nanch'ang, repeated assaults of the principal force under Mao and the army commander, Chu Teh, were bloodily repulsed.

The unimaginative stubbornness of Li Li-san almost succeeded in breaking the back of the Red Army. But not quite. Before this happened Mao and Chu Teh made the decision to break off the Nanch'ang action and withdraw. The Li Li-san group, however, insisted that the attack on Ch'angsha should be resumed, and much against their better judgement Mao and Chu Teh accepted these orders. The result of a week's fighting was almost catastrophic, and in the evening of 13 September 1930 the Red Army, shattered by a month of almost continuous battle against greatly superior forces, withdrew toward central Kiangsi. In October Chiang launched the first of the so-called ‘extermination campaigns’. A new phase now began.

While the Communist veterans of the campaigns in south China have a right to be proud of their successes in the mobile war they conducted, these must be evaluated in the light of the opposition the Red Army was required to face during the first four ‘Bandit Suppression’ campaigns directed with such ineptitude from Nanking.

The majority of the non-Central divisions of the 1930's, and particularly the ‘war lord’ troops, were composed of illiterate peasant conscripts. These men, poorly trained and equipped, badly fed and irregularly paid, were treated in arbitrary fashion by their officers. The rate of desertion was fantastic, and as padded muster rolls were normal it was impossible to determine the actual strength of any Kuomintang unit. Normally complemented at about ten thousand, many divisions could at best have paraded half that number. Peculation was endemic; it afflicted most of the officers including many of the generals. Nepotism was rampant. In many units the venereal disease rate was shockingly high. Medical facilities were almost totally lacking. It is not surprising that the morale of such troops left something to be desired. Their feeble officers did little to improve the situation.

At this time there were half a dozen ‘model’ Central Army divisions commanded by competent, brave, and honest generals. Not until the Fourth Campaign was any of these committed.⁶⁶ Fortunately for the Communists, they rarely encountered Kuomintang divisions of this standard. By committing poor units under inept commanders to his ‘suppression’ campaigns, the Generalissimo contributed to the steady increase in Red strength. In this policy there was more than meets the eye: Chiang's idea was that the Reds and the non-Central troops would destroy each other. But the troops did not see the situation in precisely the same way. They surrendered to the Communists by battalions. Many of the captured officers and men immediately joined the Red Army. The weapons taken were numbered in tens of thousands. In 1936 Mao remarked:

We have a claim on the output of the arsenals of London as well as of Hanyang, and, what is more, it is to be delivered to us by the enemy's own transport corps. This is the sober truth, not a joke.⁶⁷

By 1949 the Americans, who had spent several billion dollars equipping, training, supporting, and transporting Chiang's armies, were fully aware that this was indeed no joke.

Only during the Fifth Campaign (planned by his German advisers and mounted in late 1933) was the Generalissimo able to impose his will on the Reds. Nationalist troops, including well-trained and equipped Central divisions, were used in overwhelming force; their advances were slow, careful, and co-ordinated. As they inched methodically south they applied a scorched-earth policy. Peasants were forcibly removed from the zone of operations; the Communists were deprived of their ability to get information. The Nationalists had finally learned how essential it was to maintain contact between adjacent elements; the Reds were thus not able to concentrate against isolated units and overwhelm them. For the first time they suddenly discovered that they had been deprived of the initiative. The result was unexpected: the Communists panicked and cracked. Reduced to complete passivity, they did not, in Mao's words, ‘show the slightest initiative or dynamic force’, and were left with ‘no alternative but to withdraw’ from Kiangsi. This campaign, later the subject of countless exhaustive post mortems, forced the Red command to undertake the now celebrated Long March to north-west China.

As their later operations proved, the Reds had learned; one lesson they carried with them into Shensi was that those deprived of the initiative usually lose, those who retain it usually win. Loss of initiative in the Fifth Campaign was in part due to over-confidence; the Red high command committed the cardinal sin of underestimating the enemy. Here, for the first time, the Reds knew neither the enemy nor themselves, and were in peril in every battle. Possibly with this experience in mind Mao later wrote:

We must not belittle the saying in the book of Sun Wu Tzu, the great military expert of ancient China, ‘Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.’⁶⁸

Kiangsi and the ‘Long March’ were the Communists' military laboratories; Yenan, the quiet retreat in which experience was analysed. Shortly after arriving at Pao An, the temporary Red capital, Mao took to his cave and began to write. He devoted little time to analysis of successes; study of the failures was more rewarding. With disarming honesty he described the last of the ‘Bandit Suppression’ campaigns as a Red ‘fiasco’ in which the Communists had neglected to observe the principle which should govern all military operations:

The first essential of military operations is to preserve one's own forces and annihilate the enemy and to attain this end it is necessary to … avoid all passive and inflexible methods. …⁶⁹

The question of the offence as opposed to passive defence did not worry Mao; he realized, as Sun Tzu had, that no war can be won by adoption of a static attitude. On this subject the Chairman minced no words; he describes those who deliberately assume such a position as ‘fools’.

The strategy and tactics used with such success against the Japanese emphasized constant movement and were based on four slogans coined at Ching Kang Shan:

1. When the enemy advances, we retreat!
2. When the enemy halts, we harass!
3. When the enemy seeks to avoid battle, we attack!
4. When the enemy retreats, we pursue!

Mao has never felt it necessary to point out the remarkable similarity of his sixteen-character jingle to several of Sun Tzu's verses.

Later, when Mao was able to reflect fully on the lessons of the battles in the south and on the Long March he wrote, in paraphrased elaboration of Sun Tzu:

In general, the shifting of forces should be done secretly and swiftly. Ingenious devices such as making a noise in the east while attacking in the west, appearing now in the south and now in the north, hit-and-run and night action should be constantly employed to mislead, entice and confuse the enemy.

Flexibility in dispersion, in concentration and in shifting is the concrete manifestation of the initiative in guerrilla warfare, whereas inflexibility and sluggishness will inevitably land one in a passive position and incur unnecessary losses. But a commander proves himself wise not by understanding how important the flexible employment of forces is but by being able to disperse, concentrate or shift his forces in time according to specific circumstances. This wisdom in foreseeing changes and right timing is not easy to acquire except for those who study with a receptive mind and take pains to investigate and think things over. In order that flexibility may not become reckless action, a careful consideration of the circumstances is necessary.⁷⁰

Communist commanders repeatedly proved themselves capable of utilizing terrain more effectively than their opponents. Real estate, as such, was never an important factor with the Reds, who were experts at running away. Mao has several times humorously remarked that he doubted very much if any army had ever been quite so proficient in this respect. But this running away was usually designed to draw the enemy on and to induce over-confidence in his commanders, who became arrogant and lax. Sucked into unknown country, deprived of information, and with tenuous lines of communication, Nationalist units in Kiangsi were skilfully ‘cut out’ and dealt with individually. This process was to be applied with equal success during the Civil War, both in Manchuria and North China.

The superior intelligence service of the Communists usually enabled them to determine the enemy's ‘shape’; their own they were equally successful in obscuring. Their appraisals of the enemy were almost invariably accurate. Mao later wrote:

Some people are intelligent in knowing themselves but stupid in knowing their opponents, and others the other way round; neither kind can solve the problem of learning and applying the laws of war.⁷¹

One of the most difficult problems which confronts any commander who has committed his forces in accordance with a well-developed plan is to alter this in the light of changing circumstances. Sun Tzu recognized the inherent difficulties, both intellectual and physical, and repeatedly emphasized that the nature of war is ceaseless change. For this reason operations require continuous review and readjustment. Mao writes:

The process of knowing the situation goes on not only before but also after the formulation of a military plan. The carrying out of a plan, from its very beginning to the conclusion of an operation, is another process of knowing the situation, i.e., the process of putting it into practice. In this process, there is need to examine anew whether the plan mapped out in the earlier process corresponds with the actualities. If the plan does not correspond or does not fully correspond with them, then we must, according to fresh knowledge, form new judgements and make new decisions to modify the original plan in order to meet the new situation. There are partial modifications in almost every operation, and sometimes even a complete change. A hothead who does not know how to change his plan, or is unwilling to change it but acts blindly, will inevitably run his head against a brick wall.⁷²

This seems unnecessarily verbose, but history provides ample evidence that the theme needs to be repeated again and again.

To retire when conditions indicate it to be desirable is correct; attack and defence are complementary. Mao paraphrases Sun Tzu this way:

Attack may be changed into defense and defense into attack; advance may be turned into retreat and retreat into advance; containing forces may be turned into assault forces, and assault forces into containing forces.⁷³

It is one of the most important tasks of command ‘to effect timely and proper change of tactics according to the conditions of the units and of the terrain, both on the enemy's side and our own’.⁷³ One yields when it is expedient; he gives A in order that he may take B. By timely retirement he conserves his strength and preserves the initiative. Conversely, a belated retirement is essentially a passive action: initiative has been lost.

Deception and surprise are two key principles. Again paraphrasing Sun Tzu, Mao has said that war demands deception. ‘It is often possible by adopting all kinds of measures of deception to drive the enemy into the plight of making erroneous judgements and taking erroneous actions, thus depriving him of his superiority and initiative.’⁷⁴ The enemy is deceived by creating ‘shapes’ (Sun Tzu) or ‘illusions’ (Mao). At the same time, one conceals his shape from the enemy. The eyes and ears of hostile commanders are sealed. Deception is not enough—the enemy's leaders must be confused; if possible, driven insane.⁷⁵ The morale of the enemy is the target of high priority, its reduction an essential preliminary to the armed clash. Here again is a distinct echo of Sun Tzu, the first proponent of psychological warfare.

From Mao's work, man emerges as the decisive factor in war. Weapons are important but not decisive. It is man's directing intelligence which counts most:

In actual life we cannot ask for an invincible general; there have been few such generals since ancient times. We ask for a general who is both brave and wise, who usually wins battles in the course of a war—a general who combines wisdom with courage.⁷⁶

The wise general is circumspect; he prefers to succeed by strategy:

We do not allow any of our Red Army commanders to become rash and reckless hot-heads and must encourage everyone of them to become a hero who, at once brave and wise, possesses not only the courage to override all obstacles but the ability to control the changes and developments of an entire war.⁷⁷

This ability is what Sun Tzu had in mind when he used the phrase ‘to control victory’.

The dispositions of a thoughtful commander ‘ensue from correct decisions’ derived from ‘correct judgements’, which depend on ‘a comprehensive and indispensable reconnaissance’.⁷⁸ The data gathered by observation and from reports are carefully appraised; the crude and false discarded; the refined and true retained. The wise general thus is able to go ‘through the outside into the inside’.⁷⁸ A careless one ‘bases his military plan upon his own wishful thinking’; it does not correspond with reality; it is, in a word, ‘fantastic’.⁷⁸

In the early phases of the Civil War the Reds repeatedly demonstrated their mastery of deceptive tactics and their mobility. An almost uncanny ability to determine points of Nationalist weakness permitted them to exploit these qualities and led inevitably to an accelerating disintegration of the Nationalist position. Throughout the Civil War the Communists continually threw Sun Tzu's book of war at the Generalissimo's dispirited commanders. In Manchuria, to which he permitted himself to be lured despite the advice of his American advisers, the ‘Gimo's’ best divisions were macerated and his hopes destroyed.

In Korea the Chinese Communists deployed almost a quarter of a million men to battle positions south of the Yalu before the United Nations command became aware that its widely dispersed elements were even seriously threatened. This grand manœuvre, imaginatively conceived and skilfully executed, was the preliminary to a driving offensive that came within an ace of destroying the United Nations force in Korea.

But except for the short period which immediately followed intervention, the People's Liberation Army was forced to fight under stabilized conditions. Circumstances did not permit the PLA to conduct the mobile war for which it was best fitted. Faced with constricted terrain which favoured a technically skilled opponent capable of deploying massive resources of fire power, the Red command had little scope for ingenuity. The adoption of wave tactics seems in retrospect to have been almost an act of desperation.

Some Western observers have drawn conclusions from the latter phases of the Korean experience which would not necessarily be applicable in other situations. It is dangerous to assume that the Chinese will operate in accordance with any previous pattern. It is safer to expect them to change their tactics ‘in an infinite number of ways’. Mao has said:

We should carefully study the lessons which were learned in past wars at the cost of blood and which have been bequeathed to us. … We must put conclusions thus reached to the test of our own experiences and absorb what is useful, reject what is useless and add what is specifically our own.⁷⁹

It has often been said that had Western leaders read Hitler's Mein Kampf they would have been somewhat better equipped than they were to deal with him. Some familiarity with Mao's speeches and writings, together with the major works which provide their conceptual framework, would assist leaders of the present generation to an equal degree. From any collection of such works, The Art of War could not be omitted.⁸⁰

Notes

1. Modern Chinese scholars consider that the period described as ‘The Warring States’ commenced in 453 b.c. with the dissolution of the kingdom of Chin. Orthodox scholarship has preferred 403 b.c., the year in which King Wei Lieh of Chou legitimatized the action taken fifty years previously by the Wei, Chao, and Han Clans.

2. When the armies of Chin were reorganized by Duke Wen in 636 b.c. he assigned command of each column to a powerful vassal. In Ch'i the three columns were commanded respectively by the sovereign, the heir apparent, and the second son. When the army of King Ho-lü invaded Ch'u in 506 b.c. it was commanded by the First Minister, Wu Tzu-hsü. There were no titular generals until the Warring States. This critic is cited WSTK, p. 939.

3. WSTK, p. 940.

4. Ibid. This story is not so ‘fantastic’ as to be unworthy of belief. Chinese history is replete with stories every bit as fantastic. This type of criticism is not objective and can be accorded no weight.

5. Ibid., p. 941.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. HCP [Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy] i, pp. 80-81.

10. HCP i, p. 7.

11. Ibid.

12. CA, p. 267. Duyvendak thinks the system did actually exist. See BLS [Book of Lord Shang], pp. 41-42 and note 1. Professor Dubs describes the system in HFHD [History of the Former Han Dynasty] (iii, pp. 519-21) and states: ‘The Confucian tradition was that this system had been universal in Chou times in all flat regions and that other types of terrain had been parcelled out proportionately.’ He adds that it looks excellent ‘on paper’, but appears to be sceptical as to the feasibility of practical application. It is possible that the author of The Art of War derived his information about the system from the works of Mencius. Both Hu Han-min and Liao Ch'ung-k'ai maintained that the ching t'ien existed. An academic war, triggered off by Hu Shih, was waged for several years in learned journals, but the entire question remains unsettled.

13. The peasants were not slaves. They were serfs, and were strictly controlled and regimented:

    Sa vie entière, publique et privée, était regie, non pour lui, mais pour toute la communauté à la fois, par le souverain et individuellement par ses fonctionnaires. Des agents spéciaux lui commendaient chaque année les cultures qu'il devait faire, et les temps des semailles et de la moisson; d'autres lui ordonnaient de quitter sa maison d'hiver pour aller travailler aux champs, et de quitter les champs pour se renfermer dans sa maison; d'autres encore s'occupaient de son mariage; d'autres lotissaient les terrains et distribuaient les parts supplémentaires suivant le nombre des enfants.

    (CA, p. 95.)

    In further refutation of Konrad's ‘slave economy’ hypothesis it may be added that Sun Tzu's solicitude for the welfare of the people and his realization that their morale and that of the army must be sustained if war is to be successfully prosecuted are inconsistent with a society in which the mode of production was based on the institution of slavery.

14. HFT [Han Fei Tzu] ii, p. 240.

15. It is impossible to make dogmatic statements about early Chinese military history. Campaigns were frequently interrupted by rebellion at home, by an attempted coup d'état, or a sudden attack launched during the absence of the army.

16. Confucius had earlier expressed his scepticism when questioned about the spirit world. Apparently he was one of the first to do so.

17. CKS, p. 9. …

18. Tai Chia.

19. Only the shih were permitted to ride chariots to battle, a prerogative they enjoyed as well in time of peace.

20. CKS, p. 9.

21. Maspero suspects that The Art of War—which he describes as ‘un petit opuscule’ (CA, p. 328) and ‘ce petit ouvrage’ (ibid., note 1)—is a forgery of the third century b.c. and cannot properly be ascribed either to Sun Pin or his ‘fabulous ancestor’.

22. Personal correspondence.

23. Personal correspondence.

24. HCP, p. 20. But Sun Hsing-yen, whose edition of the classic has been considered standard for almost two centuries, was convinced that the work had been written by Sun Tzu:

    The words of the philosophers were all put down after they departed this world by followers and pupils who recorded them and made them into books. Only this book was written by Sun Tzu's own hand. Moreover, it antedates the Lieh Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Meng Tzu and Hsün Tzu and is really an old book.

    (WSTK, p. 941. These works are said to have been composed, respectively, in the third century b.c.; between 369 and 286 (?) b.c.; between 372 and 289 (?) b.c., and in the mid-third century b.c.)

25. 53 b.c..-a.d. 23.

26. a.d. 32-92.

27. See HIWC.

28. This accounts for the confused state of some of the ancient works when they were rediscovered. The thongs or strings rotted and the slips fell apart.

29. a.d. 803-52.

30. BLS, pp. 244-52.

31. HFT ii, p. 290.

32. Reigned 265-245 b.c.

33. Dubs, i, p. 158.

34. Ibid., p. 159.

35. Ibid., p. 161.

36. Trans. Esson M. Gale as ‘Debate on Salt and Iron’.

37. HFHD iii, p. 442 n. 213.

38. Ts'ao Ts'ao has for centuries been regarded as one of the outstanding masters of the military art.

39. Ching Yang was on or near the site of modern T'aiyuan.

40. Granet, pp. 25-26.

41. HCP, pp. 94-95.

42. Cited by Liang Ch'i Ch'ao, p. 97.

43. This expression was given currency by Shang Yang (Lord Shang), Prime Minister to Duke Hsiao of Ch'in. He conceived the two ‘fundamental Occupations’ to be war and agriculture. He is universally execrated by traditional historians.

44. BLS, p. 95.

45. Fitzgerald, p. 70.

46. See Doctor Lionello Lanciotti's scholarly and fascinating essay ‘Sword Casting and related Legends in China’ in East and West (Year VI, no. 2 and no. 4, of July 1955 and Jan. 1956 respectively).

47. Quoted from Doctor Lanciotti's translation of a passage in the Wu Yüeh Ch'un Ch'iu in East and West (Year VI, no. 2, pp. 107-8).

48. In his discussion of the text of the Shih Chi biography of Ching K'o in Statesman, Patriot and General in Ancient China, Professor Bodde expresses the opinion that iron was probably not widely used in China until c. 300 b.c. Doctor Joseph Needham's monograph Development of Iron and Steel Technology in Ancient China, the latest scholarly survey of this subject, assigns the use of iron weapons and tools to circa the mid-fourth century b.c. But the fact that iron tripods on which the penal laws were engraved were cast in Chin as early as 512 b.c. (TC, 29th year of Duke Chao) proves that the Chinese were familiar with crude smelting and casting processes at a much earlier date. It is scarcely conceivable that almost one hundred and fifty years would have elapsed between practical knowledge of such a process and its general application.

49. HFT ii, p. 235.

50. HFT ii, p. 235.

51. This interdiction was not always observed.

52. Dubs, i, p. 167. An absurd example of this occurred in 638 b.c. when Duke Hsiang of Sung faced the Ch'u army at the River Hung. When the Ch'u force was half across his minister urged him to attack. The Duke refused. When the entire enemy army had crossed but was not yet arrayed for battle, the minister again pressed the Duke to attack. Duke Hsiang silenced his importunate adviser: ‘The sage does not crush the feeble, nor give the order for attack until the enemy have formed their ranks.’ The Duke was wounded and his forces scattered in defeat. In this context, Mao Tse-tung's often quoted remark, ‘We are not the Duke of Sung’, is interesting.

53. HSWC, pp. 38-39.

54. TC, 23rd year Duke Chao (CC V, ii, p. 696). This source does not relate that the condemned criminals cut their throats, but only that they charged the allied troops fiercely. Possibly the tale was embellished by a later chronicler upon whom the commentator relied.

55. Related by Tu Mu under v. 18, ch. vii.

56. Reflex, or so-called ‘Tartar’, bows were used by the Shang (Yin) people before the Chou conquest. Whether these were then composite, i.e. of laminated horn, sinew, and wood, is not known. But later bows were constructed on this principle and to this design with pulls of well over one hundred (and sometimes as high as one hundred and fifty) pounds. Obviously these were much more powerful weapons than the single-stave bow ordinarily used in the west. The Chinese also used pellet bows, but probably principally for hunting birds.

57. CC IV, ii, iii, p. 455, Ode 7.

58. It is impossible to deal with Chinese siege and defence techniques of this period except in general terms. There is little specific information.

59. Analects, book vii, trans. Waley, p. 124.

60. The Chinese have always had a special feeling for nature; for their great mountains, rivers, forests, and gorges. This is reflected in their painting, history, poetry, and other literature. Possibly the ability of their great soldiers to use terrain to best advantage derives from this apparently innate appreciation of it. China's greatest military geographer, Ku Tsu-yu (Ku Chin-fang) (1631-92), whose father and grandfather were also geographers, wrote in the Preface to his Outline of Historical Geography, completed circa 1678:

    Anyone who is to start military operations in one part of the country should know the condition of the country as a whole. To start such an operation without such a knowledge is to court defeat regardless of whether it is a defensive or offensive operation.

    (China's Ancient Military Geography, p. 4.)

    Ku had great respect for Sun Tzu's appreciation of the influence terrain always has on strategy:

    No one can discuss strategy better than Sun Tzu and no one can discuss the advantages of terrain better than he.

    (Ibid., p. 20.)

61. Snow, Red Star over China, p. 128.

62. Ibid., p. 130.

63. Ibid., p. 131.

64. Teng Ssu-yu, New Light on the History of the T'ai P'ing Rebellion, p. 65.

65. Li Li-san was following the Moscow directive.

66. The first campaigns were fought by a Red Army greatly inferior in every material respect. This army had no aircraft, no motor vehicles, no tactical radios or telephones, no artillery, no medical service, few mortars, a limited number of light and heavy machine guns, and was always plagued with a critical shortage of ammunition. It survived not entirely because of the poor quality of the opposition, but in some measure because of the intellectual flexibility of its commanders, the morale of its rank and file, and the superior intelligence which resulted from the support of the peasants. It enjoyed as well a decided superiority in tactical doctrine.

67. Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, i, p. 253.

68. Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, i, p. 187.

69. Ibid., ii, p. 96.

70. Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, ii, pp. 130-1.

71. Ibid. i, p. 187.

72. Ibid., pp. 185-6.

73. Mao Tse-tung, On the Protracted War, pp. 102-3.

74. Ibid., p. 98.

75. Mao Tse-tung, On the Protracted War, p. 100.

76. Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, i, p. 183.

77. Ibid., p. 188.

78. Ibid., p. 185.

79. Mao Tse-tung, On the Protracted War, p. 186.

80. One of those most responsible for the great interest the Chinese Communists have displayed in Sun Tzu is Kuo Hua-jo, whose name is practically unknown in the West. In 1939 Kuo completed an analytical commentary on The Thirteen Chapters entitled A Preliminary Study of Sun Tzu's Art of War (Sun Tzu Ping Fa Ch'u Pu Yen Chiu). This was designed to be used as a military textbook in Red-controlled areas. The position Kuo has now enjoyed as a leading military theoretician seems to date from that period. His latest edition of The Art of War is Chin I Hsin P'en Sun Tzu Ping Fa: A Modern Translation with New Chapter Arrangement of Sun Tzu's ‘Art of War’. As the title suggests, the material has been completely rearranged. Sun Tzu's verses have been phrased in colloquial Chinese and simplified characters are used throughout.

Bibliography

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Dubs, Professor Homer H. (trans.). History of the Former Han Dynasty (3 vols.). Baltimore, Md., 1946, 1955. The Waverly Press.

———Hsün Tze, The Moulder of Ancient Confucianism. London, 1927. Arthur Probsthain.

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II

Monographs and Articles in English

Bodde, Dirk. Statesman, Patriot and General in Ancient China. New Haven, Conn., 1943. A Publication of the American Oriental Society.

Chang, Ch'i-yün. China's Ancient Military Geography. Chinese Culture, vii, no. 3. Taipeh, December 1959.

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Lanciotti, Lionello. Sword Casting and Related Legends in China, I, II. East and West, Year VI, N. 2, N. 4. Rome, 1955, 1956.

Needham, J. The Development of Iron and Steel Technology in China. London, 1958. The Newcomen Society.

North, Robert C. ‘The Rise of Mao Tse-tung.’ The Far Eastern Quarterly, vol. xi, no. 2, February 1952.

Rowley, Harold H. The Chinese Philosopher Mo Ti (reprint from Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. xxxi, no. 2, November 1948). Manchester, 1948. The Manchester University Press.

Selections from China Mainland Magazines. ‘Comrade Lin Piao in the Period of Liberation War in the Northeast.’ American Consulate General. Hong Kong, 217, 11 July 1960.

Teng, Ssu-yü. New Light on the History of the T'aip'ing Rebellion. Cambridge, Mass., 1950. Harvard University Press.

Van Straelen, H. Yoshida Shoin. Monographies du T'oung Pao, vol. ii. Leiden, 1952. E. J. Brill.