Sun Tzu’s Philosophy and Changes in Warfare in Early China

Both the Spring and Autumn period and the immediately following Warring States period were characterized by almost constant warfare between fiefdoms, dukedoms, and kingdoms. Some of these had goals of conquest, while others were simply trying to survive. The difference between the two periods is the scale of warfare; during the Warring states period, much larger armies were fielded and more advanced weaponry and tactics were employed. Sun Tzu’s famous The Art of War roughly straddles the historical divide between those two periods, as the author discusses small-army tactics and ways for inferior forces and nations to survive, while at the same time discussing strategies that would prove (or, would have proved) very useful in the massed-army battles of the near future (Warring States period).

In discussing Sun Tzu and his influence on military strategy and tactics, one must first of all assess the changes in the nature of warfare in early China that took place during and after his lifetime. While The Art of War was then and still is now a very famous and widely disseminated work, it would probably be a causation/correlation error to make a simplistic statement such as, “Sun Tzu wrote ‘The Art of War,’ and everything changed.” Rather, it would probably be more accurate to say that Sun Tzu’s writings were in response to changes that were already taking place.

The timeline as agreed upon by most scholars, both Chinese and Western, is that the Spring and Autumn period began in 771 B.C. and ended roughly at 476 B.C.; the Warring States period lasted until 221 B. C. and the unification of China. Sun Tzu is thought to have been born in 544 B.C. and died in 496 B.C. Thus, Sun Tzu’s life and writings were wholly in the Spring and Autumn period, but at the same time near enough to the Warring States period that many of the features of the latter period were already evolving. After all, it’s not as if a referee stepped in, called “halftime break,” and then after an intermission, the Warring States period ensued. The dividing date is largely arbitrary and some scholars disagree with it, putting the date of change much later or earlier.

Regardless of the exact dates involved, Sun Tzu was born into a time when there had been several centuries of almost continuous warfare. We think today of “China” as a unified nation and a relatively homogenous cultural area, but during the pre-imperial era, it was anything but: the region was highly balkanized, and various kingdoms and fiefdoms large and small vied for territory, resources, and political and military dominance over one another. A good analogy for this situation might be early-to-High Renaissance Europe, with its constant bloodshed and clashing armies. Yuri Pines, in Envisioning Eternal Empire, strongly suggests that the writings of Sun Tzu and other thinkers of his time were in response to a desire to end the constant state of warfare: “Throughout the centuries of political division and sociopolitical crisis…statesmen and thinkers sought remedies against the ongoing turmoil. Through repeated trial and error, they developed distinctive administrative and military mechanisms” (Pines 2). Of course, the emergence of a unified nation-state called “China” was still centuries in the future, and very few if any of the dueling lords and kings of the time would have even contemplated the idea of surrendering their personal sovereignty to a higher authority (such as the later Emperors). Sun Tzu’s advice was meant not so much for a great nation-state seeking to conquer and/or destroy its neighbors as for a smaller kingdom trying to survive and perhaps emerge victorious in a period of constant warfare.

For Sun Tzu viewed war as a necessary evil at best, and stated many times in The Art of War that a successful leader avoided war as much as possible. This quotation exemplifies his thinking: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting” (qtd. in McCaulay 15). Most telling in terms of relating Sun Tzu’s thinking to the prevailing unsettled climate of his day is this quote: “There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare” (qtd. in McCaulay 17). Therefore, while The Art of War is widely seen, particularly in the West, as a handbook for fighting wars, it is more properly seen as a guide to avoiding them. For Sun Tzu, war was nothing more than a painful necessity. Given his view that prolonged warfare was to be avoided, his advice can be seen as directed toward a) helping a smaller state end a conflict by inflicting so much damage on a superior foe that they abandon the fight, b) achieving victory as the most certain means of ending a war, or c) establishing a reputation for invincibility in battle that would allow a state to expend less resources in maintaining a standing army (this last has, in fact, been a primary strategy of the U.S. during much of its history). The one topic that Sun Tzu did not address, nor, it seems, would he have wished to, is the grand strategic planning of wars of mass conquest, such as those that characterized the Warring States period.

The shift in both tactical and strategic warfare between the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods was profound. First of all, the scale of warfare increased. This was largely due to the consolidation of dozens of conflicting dukedoms, fiefdoms, and kingdoms into essentially seven major rival combatants: Qin, the eventual victor, Qi, Chu, Yan, and the three Jins, Han, Wei, and the first Emperor Zheng Zhao. Of these, Qin and Chu enjoyed the greatest advantages, both of controlling a larger geographical area and of being on the periphery rather than in the center of the grouping of states, which meant that Qin and Chu could essentially choose their enemies. Yan and Qi benefited from their frontage on the ocean, while Zhao had its back to the steppes of present-day Mongolia. Thus, Wei and Han were in the worst position, completely surrounded by larger, stronger neighbors, though this effect was partly mitigated by the fact that they each occupied resource-rich river valleys: The consolidation of states meant that leaders now had the resources to conscript and supply vast armies, which along with advances in warfare, meant that brute force rather than tactics and maneuver often carried the day. Whether a state won or lost a war was often a function of supply and logistics more than anything else. While Sun Tzu touched on this topic, it should be noted that he advocated feint and deception and abhorred the idea of frontal assault, particularly against a superior foe. But what could a leader do when confronted by the steamroller of a 500,000-strong army? While “all war is based on deception,” sometimes it doesn’t matter much if the enemy is deceived, not if that enemy brings a huge amount of force to bear. Thus, the wars of the Warring States period were only partly adaptive to Sun Tzu’s philosophies.

Moreover, military tactics had evolved since the Spring and Autumn period. Individual soldiers wielded weapons of considerably greater lethality, such as the crossbow for infantry and the stirrup-saddle for cavalry (while not technically a weapon, the stirrup allowed a rider to charge more effectively and freed his hands to shoot a bow or wield a lance or sword). The concept of combined arms was also introduced and used on a large scale. Being able to create and support a large army gave the ability to create specialized troops. Also, the concept of a standing army and professional troops, while not replacing conscription by any means, meant that a core of trained men was at the center of an army. Qin eventually emerged victorious in part because its absorption of the Sichuan region and its agricultural output in addition to other resources enabled it to fight a protracted war against its rivals and keep its armies in the field supplied.

The Iron Age in China is estimated to have begun around 600 B.C., but it took some time before iron weapons were widely used; this, in fact, roughly coincides with and even partly defines the transition between the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period. Manufacturing, supplying, and maintaining iron weapons takes a sophisticated and stable infrastructure. In Sanctioned Violence in Early China, Mark Lewis notes that technological advances, including the crossbow, the introduction of cavalry, and above all, iron weaponry increased the lethality of combat (42-45). He also noted that the culture of the Spring and Autumn time supported a state of constant warfare: “The third section [of Lewis’s book] focuses on the obsession of the nobility with an honor based on martial prowess and shows how this led to both constant interstate warfare and a regular recourse to blood vengeance, vendetta, and civil war” (Lewis 17). The more rivals a state assimilated and the more powerful it grew, the more it was able to engage in sustained warfare. This created a kind of feedback loop that supported the warrior culture: the culture created the means for warfare, while victories in war supported and reinforced the culture. This actually clashes with Sun Tzu’s ideas.

Sun Tzu viewed war as a means to an end, and as noted above, did not believe that a state in a constant state of war could be successful. The warrior culture in early China, however, viewed war as an end in itself. That this was ultimately a self-destructive outlook (i.e., that Sun Tzu was right) didn’t seem to dissuade the feuding states; after all, might made right and victory justified whatever expenditures and sacrifices were necessary. That the sacrifices were largely the lives of conscripted peasants made them easy to accept, and of course, the pre-imperial Chinese peasant had no more say in his fate or control over his life than, say, the modern Chinese citizen in the era of Maoist ideology. The population was simply a tool to be used, and to be used up.

An interesting insight into the forces driving warfare in pre-imperial China can be had by examining chariot warfare. The war chariot usually contained a driver, an archer, and a close-combat warrior (armed with a dagger-axe or a lance). This was a fearsome combination and was effective in the right setting, but was ultimately a tactically unsound weapon. It should be noted that the chariot was essentially a Bronze Age weapon, imported into China from the West (Shaughnessy 189). It became obsolete in the West due to the advent of iron weapons (which increased both the offensive and defensive capabilities of foot soldiers) and the widespread introduction and use of cavalry. After all, three mounted cavalrymen had greater striking capability than the three-man crew of a chariot, if for no other reason than one of the crew of the chariot had to drive the horses. The difference in China, though, was that the crossbow had been invented and was in widespread use by the end of the Spring and Autumn era. A few skilled crossbowmen (with adequate training and a supply of personal nerve) could blunt or even destroy a chariot attack. One would think, therefore, that chariots would have ceased to be used even more quickly in China than in the West, once the abovementioned technological advances in warfare had taken place. In China, however, chariot warfare lingered because chariots were associated with the elite and the nobility (Shaughnessy 197-8; Lewis 12-14). This speaks to the warrior culture and the structures that supported it being more important than practical considerations; Sun Tzu would have abhorred the tactical flaws of the chariot and probably told its crew to get down from the chariot and pick up a sword.

In point of fact, in examining the life and writings of Sun Tzu, one wonders just how much he actually was listened to by the authorities of the time. The somewhat distorted lens of history sometimes gives us the impression that a now famous, almost legendary figure was famous and influential in his own time. This writer wonders if that was actually the case. Parenthetically, the legend of Sun Tzu’s training of the concubines is almost certainly apocryphal; he wouldn’t have been able or inclined to defy the king and certainly wouldn’t have beheaded two of his favorite concubines, especially when ordered not to. It is much more likely that Sun Tzu competed with many others for the attention and ear of authority figures, monarchs, and generals.

Perhaps the most telling point in favor of a view of Sun Tzu’s philosophy only becoming widespread well after the fact is that none of the seven antagonists during the Warring States period really paid much attention to it. Qin and Chu in particular maintained a non-Sun Tzu-esque constant state of warfare and aggression against their neighbors. While Qin was the ultimate victor, it could also be said that for the other six of the seven combatants, warfare was a losing strategy. Sun Tzu favored negotiation and diplomatic maneuver over warfare as a tool to gain dominance over one’s enemies. Indeed, world history since his time has largely shown him to be correct. War consumes resources, of which no state or nation has an unlimited supply. A truly successful state is one that has learned the art of not fighting wars. Perhaps part of the reason why many people—even scholars—misconstrue the thoughts of Sun Tzu is the permanence of the Chinese Empire. But most world empires that large haven’t lasted all that long; Alexander’s broke up as soon as he died, Napoleon’s broke up after a very short time, and Nazi Germany’s lasted less than three years. Building a massive army and using it to stomp on all your neighbors actually doesn’t work all that well, as Sun Tzu would tell us.

Works Cited

Lewis, Mark E. Sanctioned violence in early China. SUNY Press, 1990.

McCaulay, Philip Martin. Sun Tzu's the Art of War. Lulu.com, 2009.

Pines, Yuri. Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Period. University of Hawaii Press, 2009.

Shaughnessy, Edward L. "Historical Perspectives on the Introduction of the Chariot into China." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 48, no. 1, 1988, pp. 189-237.