The Chinese Strategic Tradition: A Research Program (I)

The downside is that very little has been done to analyze or systematize what these works have to say. [6] The myopic obsession with the Sunzi has hindered those with a background in strategic theory from the rich potential of the rest of the corpus, while the majority of scholars who specialize in these texts focus their research on the ethical, metaphysical, or epistemic claims made inside them. Thus we find ourselves in an odd situation where figures like Xunzi (old style: Hsun-tzu, d. 238 BC)–the most sophisticated thinker of the pre-imperial era–has had dozens of books and essays written about his thought, but none (to my knowledge) devote significant attention to Xunzi’s theory of victory, despite the fact he thought the topic of armed conflict enough important to devote an entire treatise to it.

That these thinkers have been lost in the shadow of the Sunzi is a tragedy. This is not only because they expanded the debates over war to topics the Sunzi only hints at (such as the relationship between economic and military power, for example, or whether the desires of the people should determine strategic priorities), but also because the strategic approach adopted by the rulers who ended the Warring States era and established China’s first great empires closely mirrored (and in some cases were directly inspired by) the thinkers who explicitly criticized the Sunzi and the ‘military methods’ (bingfa) school of thought. To put matters crudely: the men who conquered and unified the world the Sunzi was written for did so by following methods that were directly opposed to its precepts. [7] Western ignorance of Chinese history and lack of interest in other schools of thought mean that most of us do not have an inkling of what these methods were or if they might be relevant today.

An important research question that arises quite naturally from this discussion is how much influence these various schools of thought have in modern China. This question remains unanswered. Edmund Ryen’s translation of Yan Xuetong’s Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power is a good start on our search, but there remains much to explore. Quantitative analysis provides a promising approach; I would be very interested in seeing the number of times various texts are cited or referred to in open-source PLA publications, or in the speeches of prominent figures like Xi Jinping.

Less promising has been the pace of translation of China’s classic historical texts. The important texts are the Zuo Commentary, the “four histories” (Sima Qian’s Shiji, or Records of the Grand Historian, Ban Gu’s Han Shu, or Book of the Han, Fan Ye’s Hou Han Shu, or Book of the Later Han, and Chen Shou’s San Guo Zhi, or Records of Three Kingdoms) and perhaps Sima Guang’s Zizhi Tongjian, or Comprehensive Mirror in the Aid of Government. These histories were not works of strategic theory per say, but they are essential for understanding the later development of the tradition. The role these histories have played in the development of the Chinese strategic tradition can be compared to the role Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War played in the development of realist thought in the West–save that passing examinations on Thucydides has never been an official requirement for employment by Western governments, while exams on these books were a mandatory for all members of the Chinese civil service for several centuries.

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