General Zhang Zhen, First PLA NDU President (1985): "The concept of national defense includes military affairs & related political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, and other aspects. It is not limited to the military and is not equivalent to the military. From the perspective of

Disintegration Warfare & The Dream of the Red Chamber: “Using lies to confuse truth is also an important method of public opinion deception. It refers to using various means to cover up the true appearance of things with false appearances. Implement public opinion dismantlement

Many may not realize that none of us are reading "direct" translations of Sun Tzu. We are reading interpretations--even the Chinese. What Sun Tzu conveys in four characters, a contemporary Chinese translator, like Guo Huaruo, needs to use 16 characters to make this intelligible.

Lesson the PLA is learning from the Battle of the Hong River (638 BC): “Destroy the enemy’s forward bases. Military bases are the way for a strong enemy to conduct operations and affect the scope, intensity, and duration of operations. Without forward bases as support, ...

When Chinese scholars discuss grand strategy, do they begin their analysis with Thucydides? No, they draw from their own strategic canon. Ye Zicheng's "The Grand Strategy of China" begins with the 5th cent BC example of Yue's methodical destruction of the reigning hegemon, Wu ...

Mao Zedong (1955): "Our goal is to catch up with the United States and surpass the United States. Exactly how many decades it will take depends on everyone's efforts—at least 50 years, perhaps 75 years. Seventy-five years is 15 Five-Year Plans ... www.npr.org/2026/03/12/n...

Of note for anyone undertaking a serious study of Sun Tzu's Art of War in english, avoid Thomas Cleary's version (1988) at all costs. He was so intent on proving that Sun Tzu was an icon of peace that he deliberately omitted parts of the original text which implied violence ...

Deng Xiaoping (1974): “The contradiction between the two superpowers [U.S. & USSR] is IRRECONCILABLE (不可调和); one either overpowers the other, or is overpowered.” Xi Jinping (2012): “Our social system and ideology are fundamentally different from those of Western countries,

While Kissinger remains the most famous modern American strategist within the name dropping set in China, amongst serious Chinese strategic thinkers, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and particularly this 1997 book of his, appears to be much more influential in their own writings.

Liu Huaqing (2001): “Defense development is a gradual accumulation process. We cannot ignore it for a decade or two and then rush to address it when funds are available. Many development projects have long cycles, and if we don’t prioritize key projects, the gap will widen.”

“Comprehensive national power competition strategy is to compel adversaries not to take military action against oneself while striving to achieve predetermined strategic objectives through non-war means. It uses strength as the material foundation for deterring adversaries. It emphasizes defeating …

Wang Huning (1994): “Marxism first asserts that a communist society is an objective necessity, not a subjective desire of individuals. The internal driving force of historical development & the contradictory movement of various social relations inevitably lead to realization of a communist society.

“What if, during combat, the division commander orders to go east, but the political commissar orders to go west?” An explanation of the roles of the operational commander & political commissar within PLA ranks from a 2000 book, "Heart-to-Heart Talks with Leading Cadres" ...

China has their own equivalents to military strategy academics like Michael Howard and Colin Gray, but because we don't bother translating anything beyond a few niche texts we continue to think everything about Chinese strategy can be gleaned from Sun Tzu, Mao, and Unrestricted Warfare …

Xi Jinping (2013): "Our country's national interests have greatly expanded and our security and development are more closely linked to the outside world. Any disturbance in the international arena could affect our security, particularly the security of our overseas interests ...

On the one hand we lament that what CCP leadership thinks is an unknowable black box, yet on the other hand we’ve never even bothered to translate Wang Huning’s magnum opus on the principles of Marxist political thought, a work that heavily influenced Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, & Xi Jinping …

Xi Jinping doesn’t publicly acknowledges the June 4th Tiananmen crackdown, but in internal speeches to his military leaders he does bring it up as an example where the PLA was severely tested & passed. He usually refers to it as the “political turmoil (政治风波) in spring of 1989

King Wei of Qi had two governors—one praised to the sky by the king's ministers, the other ceaselessly vilified by the same officials. He dispatches trusted aides to discover the reason. The vilified governor runs an efficient domain, the praised governor runs a decrepit one ...

Got tired of waiting for somebody (anybody!) to get around to translating Yang Kuan's classic history of the Warring States era, so finally just did it myself. A link to the first three chapters is posted below if anyone is interested.

Li Ling: “Some foreign military scholars hold Sun Tzu in extremely high esteem … Sometimes, their high praise surprises even us [Chinese] …

For anyone who might be interested in the Zuozhuan as military history but find it too time consuming, complicated, or expensive (all legitimate complaints), I do have a distillation of the over 600 military actions it documents in a report you can freely access.

Unfortunately, there is no available English language history of China's extremely influential Spring & Autumn era (770-453 BC), but there are some excellent Chinese language sources. Perhaps the best is "Spring & Autumn History" by Gu Derong (顾德融) and Zhu Shunlong (朱顺龙).

Hong Bing's book, "Analysis of Chinese Strategic Principles" 《中国战略原理解析》has a useful framework to think about the foundation of early Chinese strategic thought. I have reproduced the graphic from his text here:

Is it better to view Sun Tzu's Art of War as a method of strategic thinking using the modern definition of STRATEGY or instead a reflection of the original Greek meaning of STRATEGOS, indicating the purview of the general but not necessarily covering broader political themes ...

It is truly a tragedy that the Chinese speaking world has ready access to provocatively engaging, philological & historically grounded Sun Tzu analysis like Huang Pumin’s book, while the English speaking world is left to suffer through Derek Yuen’s “Deciphering Sun Tzu.”

Huang Pumin: “Profit (利) runs like a red thread through The Art of War. One should rely on all useful methods to destroy the enemy and preserve oneself. Thus, Sun Tzu proposed that when to wage war and how to conduct it depends on 'profit'—whether war benefits oneself.”

Translating a lot of Chinese articles on Sun Tzu & notice many need to go to great lengths to explain away an apparent contradiction: If winning without fighting is the ideal pursuit, why doesn't it adequately explain how to achieve this? There is a simpler way to resolve this.

In both Gaddis’ “On Grand Strategy” & Kissinger’s “On China” the only references to early Chinese strategic influence they can muster are a few stale Sun Tzu quotes. Meanwhile the best known work in China, Wu Chunqiu’s “Grand Strategy” devotes an entire chapter to the statecraft of Duke Huan of Qi…

“Mao was quick to acknowledge that the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, in his Art of War, gave him practically all the ideas incorporated into his theory.” It’s truly amazing how deeply rooted is the idiotic idea that through all of Chinese mil. history, only Sun Tzu has any value.

Fang Ke's 1992 book "Pre-Qin History of Chinese Military Dialectics" is the first work I've encountered which aligns with my contrarian view that Chu's counter-attack plan prior to the 506 BC Battle of Boju would have likely annihilated Sun Tzu's invading force if enacted...

Guo Huaruo's “Annotated Sun Tzu” notes the main contradiction in the conventional rendering of the 1st verse of Chapter 3 as identifying one's own intention to “preserve the enemy state intact” If this is correct, Sun Tzu fails to adequately explain how one accomplishes this ...

“Clausewitz claimed his book contained a kernel [of war's truth], but disappointingly, On War barely reveals it. He seems to acknowledge this writing in his preface [of a future individual who might be able to turn the kernel into a whole]. In fact, that greater mind already existed—Sun Tzu.”

Jomini: “I acknowledge that my prejudices are in favor of the good old times when the French & English guards courteously invited each other to fire first—as at Fontenoy—preferring them to the frightful epoch when priests, women, and children throughout Spain plotted the murder of isolated soldiers”

Know Your Ancient Chinese Battles, Part 1: The Battle of Changshao (684 BC) Why is it important for Westerners to become familiar with this particular battle? Because Mao Zedong held it up as the paradigmatic example of “Strategic Retreat” in his own military writings.

“Go back to any moment in history and you’ll find governments seeking to follow Sun Tzu’s advice: win without fighting.” Again, if you are trying to emphasize the non-violent aspects of conflict or competition, Sun Tzu is not the ideological fellow-traveler you think he is.

I’ve always hated the frequent analytic trope of “X violated Sun Tzu’s rule to know the enemy.” It’s as lazy and vacuous an analytic claim as “the Chiefs lost the Super Bowl because they allowed the Eagles to score more points.” What, exactly, would Sun Tzu do differently?

“The Art of War promises a way out of the Clausewitzian interaction between two forces locked in hard fighting, each determined to impose its will on the other.” It really doesn’t. This is a long-standing false and misleading assumption that we need to revise within the Western PME curriculum …

“Sun Tzu is still the writer who wrote in most detail on the means that would allow one to avoid battle and its hazards. He first recommends ‘looking for a peaceful solution to the problem among populations and not delivering battle until all other means have failed.’”

“Laozi is the masterpiece of a kind of intelligence at the opposite pole from the logical. It concentrates instead of explicating, starkly juxtaposes instead of filling in gaps. At the root of the thinking pervading this book of evasions and retreats is one dominant emotion, fear …

There is a vast amount of scholarship on Sun Tzu’s Art of War from Chinese scholars that remains unavailable in English. Often, these provide vital linguistic, textual, and historical context lacking in most English translations of the text.

Keegan: The most persistent feature of Chinese military history was moderation and restraint in warmaking. Sima Qian: Over just one 5-year period I will document over 600,000 KIA across multiple military actions, none of which are decisive, necessitating even more warmaking …

When Chinese scholars discuss grand strategy, do they begin their analysis with Thucydides? No, they draw from their own strategic canon. Ye Zicheng's "The Grand Strategy of China" begins with the 5th cent BC example of Yue's methodical destruction of the reigning hegemon, Wu ...

One can easily find a serviceable historical narrative covering the Axial Age era of the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks or even the nomadic tribes that ringed China, but we still don’t have any focusing on Eastern Zhou China, which is the same era as Confucius, Laozi & Sun Tzu.

Michael Howard argued that when it comes to studying war, one must comprehensively approach it in terms of WIDTH, DEPTH, and CONTEXT. When it comes to Sun Tzu studies in the West, we tend to focus on the “width” of Sun Tzu’s text, but generally neglect both “depth” and “context.”

“Such high praise of Sun Tzu in the West sometimes surprises even us Chinese.” Li Ling: “Some foreign military strategists hold Sun Tzu's Art of War in the highest regard. For instance, the British strategist B.H. Liddell Hart believed that it surpasses the celebrated modern …

Zhu Baoqing: “When mentioning Zuozhuan, people first think of its historical & literary value. However, its military value is no less significant than its historical & literary contributions. The Zuozhuan and the military classic Sun Tzu’s Art of War emerged from the same era …

“The Spring and Autumn era draws to a close in gathering gloom and exercises of petty Realpolitik. The old powers of ritual propriety are little more than a memory. Warfare dominates the narrative. Succession crises and rebellions divide domains against themselves and draw …

Seminar Alert! We are honoured that @johnfsullivan.bsky.social will present his work on Sun Tzu and the importance of accurate translation & context for the use of military practitioners, historians & linguists. DM for Zoom link 19 March at 15:00 CET A taster: thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2...

The first (competent) English translation of Sun Tzu was published in 1910, the same year as Norman Angell’s “The Great Illusion” which argued that warfare had evolved into such a mutually destructive endeavor that no state in the future would ever attempt to wage it …

This is probably the best mainland Chinese reference on Sun Tzu, Li Ling’s (李零) “Comprehensive Study on Sun Tzu’s 13 Chapters” (2006). It includes a full annotation plus a lot of other useful analysis. No English translation, unfortunately, but I reference it in my own “Sun Tzu Commentary”