围魏救赵

Pronunciation: wéi wèi jiù zhào Literal meaning: Besiege Wei to rescue Zhao

Origin & Usage

When Wei besieged the Zhao capital in 354 BCE, Qi sent an army under Tian Ji, and Sun Bin argued against marching to Zhao's relief at all: strike at Wei's own capital, and the Wei army will have to come home. It did — 魏果去邯郸 — and Qi met it in the field at Guiling and broke it. Besieging (围) Wei (魏) to rescue (救) Zhao (赵) became the second of the Thirty-Six Stratagems and the standard name for relieving pressure by threatening what an opponent cannot afford to leave undefended. The insight is that a besieger is weak precisely because they are committed somewhere else.

Examples

English: "Instead of defending directly, they attacked the competitor's main market."

Chinese: 他们没有直接防守，而是围魏救赵，攻击对手的主要市场。