The ancient Chinese civilization has given rise to a strategic thought characterized by innovation, authenticity, and depth, shaped by the crucible of suffering and matured in the flames of bloody wars throughout the history of successive Chinese empires. This thought is deserving of study and consideration by anyone interested in strategic thinking, both theoretically and practically. It can be said that the strategic thought in ancient Chinese civilization carries within it the seeds and roots of all subsequent strategic ideas. A review of the foundational strategic thoughts shows that most major ideas contained in these texts have roots or seeds—at the very least—in ancient Chinese thought.
Because this ancient strategic heritage continues to inspire the Chinese political and military elite, this study aims to contribute to unveiling aspects of the strategic mind that is directing China today in its quiet ascent to the pinnacle of the world. This is accomplished through a detailed analytical presentation of two of the most significant classical strategic texts produced by ancient Chinese civilization: “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu, who is believed to have lived in the 6th century BC, and the document “The Thirty-Six Strategies” attributed to an unknown author, likely written in the 6th century AD, whose contents indicate a close intellectual affinity with Sun Tzu.
The core problem of this research revolves around two central questions: What is the relationship between the historically rooted Chinese strategic heritage and the rise of contemporary People’s Republic of China? Furthermore, how applicable is this ancient Chinese strategic thought for inspiration in the context of contemporary Arab and Islamic culture today? We found evidence of the modern Chinese elite’s inspiration from this ancient heritage starting from the Chinese liberation wars against Japanese colonialism at the beginning of the 20th century, a process that has intensified over time, particularly with China’s aspirations toward global leadership in recent decades. We also concluded that the Chinese strategic heritage can be understood in the Arab and Islamic context after it has been adapted to the particular cultural environment of the Arab world and the Islamic community, just as Western military and political elites have drawn from it after customizing it to their unique cultural moods.
The study is divided into two sections, each with its own methodology and logic. The first third of the study provides general introductions, adopting a historical approach to illustrate the significance of China and its strategic heritage, emphasizing the necessity of taking them seriously. It also places the two studied texts within their historical context, observing their transition from local to global through numerous translations into various languages, and highlighting the impact of these texts on contemporary Chinese culture and Western strategic thought. The second section of the study, which constitutes about two-thirds, relies on an analytical approach. It focuses on presenting the core of the texts to the reader, extracting major strategic principles from them, formulating them concisely into twenty-four imperative or prohibitive maxims easy to memorize and understand, substantiating them with numerous textual quotations, and elaborating on them sometimes with historical examples that connect them to the context of Arab and Islamic culture. The intention behind addressing the texts in this manner is to give the study an educational and practical character, distancing it from the cold academic abstraction.
These two texts are not all that ancient Chinese civilization has bequeathed to us in terms of strategic thought; there are quite a few treasures in this domain, the most important of which are the classical seven texts that successive Chinese empires traditionally adopted as a curriculum for their political and military leaders, including the work of Sun Tzu. However, our choice fell on these two particular texts due to their profound content, the skill of their formulation, and their historical impact.
Perhaps the closest military heritage book analogous to these two texts is a concise book on the principles of war, authored by a military thinker from the Abbasid era, Abu Said al-Harthami, who lived in the third century AH. He shares similarities with them in the depth of strategic insight, density of style, and coherence of composition. We will conduct light comparisons between him and Sun Tzu throughout the study. Despite the fact that ten Arabic translations of Sun Tzu’s book have been published, we have struggled to find any serious analytical study of Sun Tzu’s work in Arabic, which has motivated us to embark on writing this study, which we hope will fill this gap.
The Hurricane and Climate Change
The focus of earlier Muslim travelers to China was primarily on its industrial prowess, the strangeness of its culture compared to their own, and the condition of Muslims within it, as reflected in the travel accounts of Al-Tanukhi in the third century AH and Ibn Battuta (703-779 AH / 1304-1377 AD) in the eighth century. However, these interests are no longer sufficient as we are in dire need today to look at China through new eyes and to engage in serious study of its thought, surpassing the concerns of those travelers and their cultural worlds. Today, there is no escaping the need to make an effort to understand this ancient civilization bordering the Islamic world and interacting with the Arab region on multiple political, economic, and strategic levels. Thus, it is imperative to resume discussions about exploring the strategic thought that sprouted from the soil of this civilization, deeply rooted in the history of human political and military action.
What necessitates the focus on China and its strategic thought is that it has now become an emerging international power expanding quietly and silently, progressing toward global leadership with patience and perseverance; the major international blocs today are divided into eight: four active and four passive. The active blocs are the United States, China, Europe, and Russia, while the passive blocs are India, the Islamic world, Africa, and Latin America. Strategic researchers agree that China is the rising power that the active and passive groups must account for, making it more deserving of study and understanding than any other nation, especially considering the shifts in the centers of power that its rise entails and its impact on passive powers.
Rob Joyce, Director of Cybersecurity at the U.S. National Security Agency, poignantly expressed China’s quiet ascendance to global leadership, comparing it to Russia by saying, “I see Russia as a hurricane, unpredictable and powerful, while China is climate change—long-term and slow in effect, inevitable and unrelenting.” This metaphor is indeed profound: the Russian strategy appears stormy and impatient, but its impact on the international system is superficial and localized despite its violence and forcefulness. Conversely, the Chinese strategy is patient and calm, but its influence on the international system is deep, comprehensive, and enduring.
The Chinese do not oppose this description of their ascent; rather, they likely appreciate it and find it beneficial to their aspirations of global leadership. Furthermore, they attribute a moral meaning to it derived from Sun Tzu’s legacy. For example, contemporary Chinese military thinker Liu Mingfu argues that China will emerge victorious over the United States in what he calls “the competition of the century,” but with a fundamentally different approach from the American method. He paints this difference by saying, “China is a primary contributor to military thought worldwide, but it has not been a primary contributor to world wars. Chinese warfare is peaceful, defensive, strategic, kind, and civilized. The Art of War by Sun Tzu represents a classic expression of Chinese military culture and a profound contemplation of China’s military character—a creative endeavor in expressing military attributes of Chinese political characteristics.”
We will analyze Sun Tzu’s thoughts and strategic principles throughout this study to see how accurate Liu Mingfu’s description of these ideas is. What is crucial here is that China is emerging from what the Chinese refer to as “the Century of Humiliation” (1840-1949), a period during which Western and Japanese colonialists subjected them to various forms of humiliation. Over the past four decades, China has embarked on a remarkable ascent, drawing its driving spirit from two main sources: the insistence on erasing the traces of contemporary humiliation and the pride in the glories of past Chinese empires. This Chinese emergence from the grip of Western domination that lasted for centuries, and its re-advancement onto the global historical stage, hold significant implications for the future of the Arab region and Islamic civilization.
The Dragon Knocks at the Doors
We can add to this Chinese ascent on the global level that China has begun to extend quietly and steadily into our strategic environment, building bridges into the Arab region and the Islamic world that shares borders with five of its nations: Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan. The last of these has strong military relations with China in facing their mutual rival, India, and increasing economic ties that are increasingly evident in China’s projects at the Pakistani port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea and its massive investments in Pakistani infrastructure. Moreover, China is in direct contact with the Muslim countries bordering the South China Sea: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei, and it is investing heavily in infrastructure throughout the Central Asian Islamic countries after the loosening of Russian control over those nations. China has also entered into a strategic partnership treaty with Iran, signed in 2021, which included long-term strategic cooperation across various domains, including military cooperation.
When we talk about Pakistan and Iran, we are delving into the edges of the Arab region, where China’s connections are intensifying, and its presence in the region, especially in the Gulf states, the Middle East, and the Horn of Africa, is growing day by day. By early 2022, China’s imports of Gulf oil (from both Arab and Iranian sources) exceeded 50% of its total oil imports, more than three times the volume of U.S. and European oil imports from the Gulf. Since 2017, China has established its first military base outside its borders in an Arab country, Djibouti, to strengthen its presence in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the Red Sea, and the Horn of Africa.
China’s relationship with the Gulf region evidently dates back; it is said that when Arabs seized the port of Abila near Basra during the caliphate of Omar ibn al-Khattab, Muslims found Chinese ships there. The American theorist of international relations, John Mearsheimer, predicted in 2010 the “comprehensive strategic partnership agreement,” outlining potential long-term implications of this agreement for the Gulf and the Middle East regions, stating: “Given China’s reliance on Gulf oil, it’s likely to compete with the U.S. for influence in this strategically significant area, similar to what the Soviet Union pursued before. While a Chinese invasion of the Middle East is unlikely, given its distance and the certainty that the U.S. will strive to thwart such an attack, it’s likely that China will establish a permanent military presence in the region if it is invited by a close ally. For instance, one could envision Iran and China strengthening their relations, which could lead to Iran seeking to stabilize Chinese forces on its soil.”
What’s interesting is that some Chinese theorists do not deny their long-term goal of supplanting American influence globally. While one American theorist warns of China’s “displacement strategies” aimed at gradually inheriting American influence worldwide without directly confronting the U.S., a Chinese theorist announces the dawn of a “post-American” era in international relations, while attempting to persuade Americans and others that China, which will hold the reins of global leadership in the future, will not be a hegemonic force but rather a cooperative power. Regardless of the underlying intentions—be they noble or malicious—China’s rising power is knocking on our region’s doors today, and it is neither wise nor prudent to ignore it.
The Presently Absent Thinker
It must not be forgotten that the strategic thought of China, which we are discussing here, is present in our lives through others, particularly the Americans, who are the most studious and applicative of Sun Tzu’s thoughts today in their wars and policies in the Arab region and the Islamic world. One American journalist accompanying the U.S. military during the Gulf War in 1991 wrote: “Although China did not send a single soldier to the Gulf, a Chinese mystery is participating in the battle, leading the fighting operations. That soldier is Sun Tzu, who lived and died 2,500 years ago.”
It suffices to know that the architect of the Gulf War plan in 1991, American pilot and military strategist John Boyd, was an esteemed disciple of Sun Tzu’s thought and that he derived the essential ideas he became renowned for from it. The idea of placing the opponent in a state of perceptual and psychological paralysis that Boyd theorized is “essentially a modern reinterpretation of Sun Tzu’s Art of War,” as noted by a Thai military researcher; it became “the basis from which Boyd proceeded, and he considered Sun Tzu a founding father of military strategies,” as noted by an American military researcher. We will discuss the concept of perceptual paralysis later.
The book “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu has remained an inspiration for political and military leaders across ages. Although this slim volume sometimes contains fewer than ten thousand words in translation, it is material-rich, making it an inexhaustible source of political and military wisdom accessed by major strategic thinkers, military leaders, politicians, corporate executives, and organization heads. Prestigious military academies continue to teach this book to their students today. As Mark McNeily observed, “the thirteen chapters of this ancient text remain a reference today for soldiers who no longer fight with swords and spears but with missiles and drones, do not communicate with flags but through satellites, and do not maneuver based on earth landmarks but by using GPS.”
If we have not granted this ancient text the attention it deserves, it remains a ‘presently absent’ text in our lives, as others have studied and applied its strategic principles against us. Now, let us shift to exploring the characteristics of Sun Tzu’s personality, some history about his book and structure, and its enduring impact, hoping to compensate for some of our previous negligence.
The Character of Sun Tzu
Available historical evidence suggests that Sun Tzu lived in a period of intense conflict among the states that divided and fought over Chinese territory, within an environment that valued political wisdom and military prowess. However, little is known about Sun Tzu’s personal life, with only fragments related to his political and military career existing, and the level of historical reliability of these scattered fragments remains unclear. What is verified reflects historical realities, while any unverifiable material depicts the attributes attributed to Sun Tzu by later Chinese thinkers and historians, which are not unfamiliar given his and his culture’s context. Among these fragments, his original name was “Sun Wu,” but he became famous as “Sun Tzu,” meaning “Master Sun,” in recognition of his knowledge and experience. He was a military commander in the court of the State of Wu, one of the many small states that exceeded 150 that shared the Chinese territory back then, and his grandfather served as a regional governor.
Little is known about Sun Tzu’s life after joining the Wu state, except that he led its army in several victorious wars against competing Chinese states. One of the most famous stories about Sun Tzu is his meeting with the King of Wu, in which the king tested his expertise by challenging him to train the palace maidens to become skilled fighters. Sun Tzu arranged the maidens in two rows, placing one of the king’s favored concubines at the front of each row. When he ordered them to begin military training, they laughed in innocence and surprise. Sun Tzu responded: “If the commands are unclear, the blame for their non-execution lies with the commander; if they are clear, then the blame lies with the soldiers.” He repeated his orders, but the maidens laughed once more, prompting Sun Tzu to draw his sword and behead the two maidens in front of the shocked and stunned king, after which the trainees became obedient, promptly executing his orders with energy and zeal.
Debates of Time and Context
What historians generally agree upon is that Sun Tzu lived in China and wrote his book “The Art of War” some time before the common era. However, they split into two schools regarding determining the specific period in which the author lived and the book emerged: one school approaches the topic from an external historical analysis method, relying on testimonies from earlier Chinese historians, favoring the view that Sun Tzu lived during the period known in Chinese history as the “Spring and Autumn” period, spanning from 722 to 481 BC. According to these historians—based on ancient Chinese sources—Sun Tzu lived between 544-496 BC.
The second school analyzes “The Art of War” through an internal textual analysis, considering the language of the book and its terminology, the nature of the military events it describes, the types of weapons it discusses, and the size of the armies it refers to. It attempts to draw lessons from this to determine the historical context that produced the text. This school argues that Sun Tzu and his book belong to a later timeframe known in Chinese history as the “Warring States” period, spanning from 403 to 221 BC. Currently, most Western academic discussions favor this second school based on the evidence that large-scale armies and their complex organization depicted in “The Art of War” did not exist during the “Spring and Autumn” period, and the book’s themes and style are more aligned with the writing norms and methods used in Chinese literature during the “Warring States” period.
Some researchers propose a reconciliation between the evidence, suggesting that Sun Tzu lived in the earlier period, but his military teachings were not compiled into a cohesive text during his time but remained an oral tradition until they were recorded and systematized by a descendant, Sun Bin, who historical evidence indicates lived approximately between 380-316 BC. This compiler infused Sun Tzu’s wisdom with a new flavor and new data drawn from a later era.
“The Art of War” in History
Sun Tzu lived in a political and military environment; thus, he was a product of his time and context, but he transcended that environment and the timescape through the intellectual legacy that still defies time. This text has aged over twenty-three centuries at the very least, maintaining its intellectual freshness and inspiring politicians and leaders even today. Strangely, this time-honored text refers back to another earlier book, which it names “The Book of Military Administration” (Chapter 7, Paragraph 17), indicating the depth of the Chinese military heritage.
While historical records may have failed us regarding the details of Sun Tzu’s life, they have not failed us concerning his book “The Art of War,” which has been preserved through the centuries and has remained circulated in China since its writing to this day, to the extent that the Chinese Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD) made studying this book—alongside six other military texts—a prerequisite for any significant military appointment in the state.
Sun Tzu’s writing was crafted in a dense style, rendering his text similar to proverbs and widely accepted sayings due to its concentrated focus, profound ideas, and concise style. Henry Kissinger described its style as “falling between poetry and prose,” while General David Petraeus described it as “an enchanting text” because it is “a blend of poetic spirit and pragmatism.”
From China, the book spread to neighboring East Asian societies, being translated during the Middle Ages into Tibetan, Japanese, and Manchu, and having a profound impact on Asian military history. American researcher Ralph Sawyer notes that “The Art of War by Sun Tzu has remained the most important military text in Asia for over two thousand years… military theorists and professional soldiers in China, Japan, and Korea have studied it. The strategies contained in it have profoundly influenced the recounting of Japanese military history since the eighth century.”
The book had the greatest impact in medieval times outside China, particularly in Japan, where it reached around the beginning of the sixth century AD, leaving its mark on military traditions for centuries; it was embraced by the Japanese imperial court, adopted as a practical guide by the military and political institutions, ensuring the text’s foundational role within Japanese military academies.
Yet American military officer Major Samuel Griffith (1906-1983), who served as a military attaché at his country’s embassy in Beijing and translated “The Art of War” into English, argues that the Japanese did not always successfully follow Sun Tzu’s strategic wisdom. When they unexpectedly attacked the Americans in their painful strike on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, they achieved a remarkable tactical victory but suffered a catastrophic strategic loss; thus, the Pearl Harbor attack was “a tactical victory, not a strategic one,” at a hefty price—a “reckless act” with dire consequences, contrary to the wisdom that Sun Tzu advises against.
Despite the deep presence of Sun Tzu’s text in the Asian heritage, it is no surprise that Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh translated the book into Vietnamese.
Western and Arabic Translations
“The Art of War” began to emerge from its ancient Asian environment into the modern world at the close of the 18th century. A French translation of the book was published in 1772 by Jesuit priest Jean Amiot (1718-1793), who served as a missionary in Beijing. However, the book did not weave itself into the fabric of Western strategic culture until the 20th century. British army captain Everard Calthrop (1876-1915) published an English translation of the book in 1908, titled “The Book of War: The Classic Eastern Military Text”. That translation was not well-done, which prompted Scottish researcher Lionel Giles (1875-1958), a specialist in Chinese affairs, to produce a more solid English translation in 1910 still in circulation today. Subsequently, numerous other English translations followed, totaling forty-seven translations published between 1904 and 2020, and I have consulted at least ten of them.
About ten Arabic translations of the book have been published; I have reviewed four of them, which are translations by Raouf Shbaik, Rabi’ Muftaah, Kamel Youssef Hussein, and a copy by Dar Al-Kitab Al-Arabi that lacks the translator’s name. These translations are based on English versions and feature weak language formulations, displaying language mistakes and stylistic confusions from the very first pages. Their inaccuracy and negligence become evident when compared with the English translations they were derived from. Given the weakness of these Arabic translations and that they were derived from another intermediary language instead of the original Chinese, we have avoided them in this study and preferred to rely on the English translation by Major Samuel Griffith, which he translated directly from Chinese.
Our choice of Griffith’s translation among the abundant English versions is due to the fact that he is well-versed in Chinese thought and history, and this translation is the subject of his doctoral dissertation on Chinese military history at Oxford University, which indicates adherence to rigorous academic standards. Moreover, this translation has been endorsed by UNESCO, which included it in its series on classic Chinese texts.
Furthermore, Griffith added to his translation comments from various ancient Chinese commentators on Sun Tzu’s work, enhancing the text’s breadth and richness. He did not simply translate the book; he also provided extensive study and analysis. Additionally, Griffith translated Mao Zedong’s pamphlet on guerrilla warfare and prefaced it with a valuable analytical introduction, as well as authored an in-depth study of the People’s Liberation Army of China. We will revisit these two works later to understand how Sun Tzu has benefited contemporary China. It is clear that the translator’s familiarity with the cultural context in which the text emerged is among the key factors aiding translation accuracy. Every quote we have derived from Sun Tzu’s text in this study is from our direct translation of Griffith’s English text.
The Enduring Impact in China
Regarding its enduring impact in China itself, the founder of modern China, Mao Zedong (1893-1976), and his communist comrades drew their military strategies from Sun Tzu; Mao himself “was a lifelong student of The Art of War,” and “the communists were students of Sun Tzu.” His book “was their Bible in their operations” and continues to inspire Chinese political and military leaders today, who see it “as applicable today as it was when its author wrote it”; thus, it is not surprising that the text has been a mandatory curriculum in all military colleges in contemporary China.
China’s adversaries, who observe its ascent with suspicion and anxiety, are aware of the extent to which the legacy of Sun Tzu influences the thinking of its current leaders. Henry Kissinger dedicated several pages in his book on China to “Chinese Political Realism and The Art of War,” summarizing Sun Tzu’s strategic ideas and their resonance among contemporary Chinese elites. Indian general Rajiv Narayanan, who specializes in Chinese affairs, emphasizes the need to acknowledge the historical continuity in contemporary Chinese strategies, pointing out that all contemporary Chinese leaders—including those in Taiwan—draw inspiration from The Thirty-Six Strategies and Sun Tzu’s work, along with other military texts produced by ancient Chinese civilization.
As for Japanese Navy Admiral Fumio Ota, he realized the extent of contemporary Chinese leaders’ inspiration from Sun Tzu during his field visits to Chinese military institutions, where he found that Sun Tzu’s book is the foundation of their training programs. One of the most interesting observations he made was that whenever he quoted a line from Sun Tzu’s text in front of one of the Chinese military leaders, the Chinese leader could spontaneously complete that line, as they learn the text by heart. Ota concluded, “China’s current strategy is greatly influenced by the ideas of Sun Tzu,” advising Japan to combat China using Sun Tzu’s principles, stating, “We should use Sun Tzu against China,” as he sees it as a double-edged sword.
Conclusion
Given what we have surveyed, it is clear the ancient strategic wisdom of Sun Tzu and The Thirty-Six Strategies offers profound insights and lessons relevant to contemporary geopolitical contexts. The importance of understanding the interplay of historical strategies in addressing modern global challenges cannot be overstated, providing frameworks for strategic leadership, decision-making, and diplomatic engagement in an increasingly complex international arena.
References
- “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu
- “Thirty-Six Stratagems: Ancient Chinese Wisdom for Modern Times” by Stefan H. Verstappen
- “The Book of Lord Shang: Ancient Chinese Text on Statecraft” by Shang Yang
- “The Tao of War: The Martial Legacy of Sun Tzu’s Art of War” by Ralph D. Sawyer
- “The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China” translated by Ralph D. Sawyer
- “The Strategic Tradition of Ancient China” by David A. Graff
- “Mastering the Art of War: Zhuge Liang’s and Liu Ji’s Commentaries on the Classic by Sun Tzu” by Thomas Cleary
- “Sun Bin: The Art of Warfare” by Sun Bin
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- “The Science of War: Sun Tzu’s Philosophy and Its Applications” by Arthur Waldron
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- “Guiguzi: Master of the Ghost Valley’s Art of War” by Guiguzi
- “Taoist Strategies of Warfare and Peace: Ancient Techniques for Modern Strategy” by Eva Wong
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- “From Strategy to Statecraft: Ancient Chinese Thought on Governance and War” by Bai Ren
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- “Heavenly Warfare: The Philosophical Foundations of Ancient Chinese Strategy” by Mark Edward Lewis
