12 Chinese Idioms About Strategy & Military Tactics

Impenetrable defenses

Literal: Metal walls, a moat of boiling water

In the Book of Han, Kuai Tong warns what will follow if the magistrate who surrendered first is put to death: the other border towns will hear of it, wall themselves up, and 皆为金城汤池，不可攻也 — all become walls of metal and moats of scalding water, and cannot be attacked. The warning is conditional and ab...

Bluffing with fake display

Literal: Empty show of strength

To make an empty (虚) display (张) of sound (声) and force (势). The military technique behind it is concrete — extra banners, drums beaten by too few men, dust raised by branches dragged behind horses — and all of it is aimed at an observer who cannot come close enough to count. That is the condition t...

Unable to stop dangerous course

Literal: Hard to dismount tiger

With the campaign against Su Jun faltering, Wen Qiao argued in council with Tao Kan that there could be no turning on the heel: 骑猛兽，安可中下哉 — having mounted a fierce beast, how is a man to get off halfway? The History of the Jin gives the words as speech rather than a letter. What the image supplies i...

Fight with total commitment having no retreat

Literal: Back to water one battle

For a single battle (一战) Han Xin drew his army up with the river (水) at their backs (背), which every officer present knew was the one formation the manuals forbid. They won, and afterwards they asked him why. Because these were levies, he said — throw them where they can run and they will run; put t...

Use bold confidence to mask vulnerability

Literal: Perform empty city strategy

To 唱 (sing, perform) the empty-city stratagem. The base is 空城计, the episode in Romance of the Three Kingdoms in which Zhuge Liang, holding a town with almost no troops, throws the gates open and sits on the wall playing the zither until Sima Yi reads the display as bait and withdraws. Adding 唱 moves...

Fabricate something out of nothing

Literal: Create something from nothing

This idiom has dual origins. Philosophically, it derives from the Daoist concept in 'Tao Te Ching' that all things emerge out of (中) nothingness (无) to give rise to (生) existence (有). Strategically, it appears in the 'Thirty-Six Stratagems' as a deceptive military tactic of creating threats or advan...

Collapse without being attacked; self-defeating

Literal: Without attack self-collapse

Broken (破) of itself (自), without (不) being attacked (攻). The military sense is literal, a position so unsound it fails before anybody assaults it, and the transferred sense keeps the crucial detail: nobody had to do anything. That is what makes it useful in argument. To call a claim 不攻自破 is to decl...

Create a diversion; use misdirection

Literal: Make noise in east, strike in west

Making the noise (声) in the east (东) and striking (击) in the west (西). The sixth of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, and the text states its condition: it works against an enemy whose command has already become confused, because the manoeuvre depends on the other side being unable to tell which of two sig...

Strategic retreat for ultimate victory

Literal: Use retreat as advance

Taking (以) retreat (退) as (为) the way forward (进). The construction puts the two directions in a means-and-end relation instead of opposing them, and that is the whole idea: the ground given up is spent rather than lost. What separates it from an actual retreat is intention, which is invisible at th...

Relieve pressure by attacking the source

Literal: Besiege Wei to rescue Zhao

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) ...

Be invincible; defeat all opponents

Literal: Wherever directed, all fall

Wherever (所) it is directed (向), everything goes flat (披靡). 披靡 is grass going down before wind, and the metaphor is precise about the kind of victory meant: not enemies beaten one at a time but resistance collapsing along the whole line as the thing arrives. Nothing is said about fighting at all. Ar...

Win every battle; be undefeated

Literal: In battle, nothing is not won

In battle (战), there is nothing (无) not (不) won (胜). The partner phrase to 攻无不克, and the division of labour between them is real: that one covers the taking of objectives and this one the engagements, so together they claim a record with no failure at either scale. The Strategies of the Warring Stat...