Top Highlights

• In general, [in employing] the military there are those who gain victory through the Tao; those that gain victory through awesomeness; and those that gain victory through strength.62 It is not difficult to notice that the moral, mental, and physical levels of war resemble the Tao, awesomeness, and strength. Wei
• Chinese strategic thought is not necessarily about the use of military force: it does not rely on and in fact renounces the means–ends rational model. Nor does it need to work as a bridge linking the political and the military spheres. Given these differences from Western norms, it is no wonder that many in the West choose to emphasize only those p...
• Chinese strategic thought is not military-centered, or at least it is far less military-centered than its Western counterpart; its real object is war rather than warfare alone. Chinese strategic thought is grand-strategic and systemic in nature. It is grand-strategic because it views war from a holistic perspective and employs all possible powers a...
• Thus, whereas Western strategic thinkers tend to equate “strategy” with military strategy (the word does of course have a more general meaning and is now also used in numerous other fields), the Chinese, even those with little military or strategic knowledge, are likely to form a more grand-strategic (i.e. holistic) picture. The same applies to the...
• Chinese tend to equate strategy (i.e. a plan designed to achieve a predefined aim) with stratagem (i.e. a plan intended to outwit an opponent). This gives Chinese strategic thought an orientation that places a much higher premium on brain power than on sheer force and technology, and in turn makes grand-strategic struggle rather than warfare a more...