This 1975 novel depicts the activities of the "Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius" movement in a Beijing socialist compound. Within the compound, a fierce struggle unfolds between the new socialist forces and the corrupt capitalist forces. Fang Qi, the "child leader," relying ...

“China and the West in terms of social system and ideology are irreconcilable (不可调和的) We will not change our banner or alter our course, and they will not change their tune or alter their course either ... If political security cannot be guaranteed, China will inevitably ...

A good article, but I do have an issue with the framing. The biggest hurdle isn't the PLA restricting access, it's that we've never adequately taken advantage of even a small fraction of the readily available open source material that already exists but has been left unexamined

War on the Rocks@warontherocks.bsky.social · last mo.

The U.S. military needs to understand how China's military thinks and fights. When most of the text on the topic is decades old, how can U.S. experts not have blind spots? warontherocks.com/the-blind-sp...

Between 2015 and 2020, the PLA's National Defense University published three separate versions of its flagship strategic text, The Science of Military Strategy 《战略学》Since neither of the later versions explain the reasons for the updates, here is what I noticed is new ...

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...

China slams Trump's trade investigation, as it approves a 5-year economic plan

China's Foreign Ministry criticized the Trump administration's trade investigation as a "pretext" for tariffs. Meanwhile, China is moving ahead with a five-year plan that may rankle trade partners.

npr.org

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.”