28 September 2017

Wei Qi or Won’t Xi The Siren Call of Chinese Strategic Culture

By Lauren Dickey

These days, in the study of Chinese strategy, a fixation upon Sun Tzu’s Art of War, the chess-like game of “weiqi” (known colloquially as Go) or the concepts of shi (strategic advantage) and shashoujian (assassin’s mace) appear increasingly en vogue.[1] From the pages of The Strategy Bridge to the corridors of U.S. military academies, many are turning to ancient Chinese edicts seeking insight into the realm of strategy and statecraft.[2] The study and adaptation of Chinese strategic culture offer an antipode to Western thought, defining strategy in contextual terms of historical experience, strategic geography, and cultural traditions in a manner that appears at loggerheads with the operation of strategy in the Western sense of the term.

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