The Art of War

The Art of War is the most famous ancient Chinese text on warfare and strategy. In Chinese it is usually called simply the Sunzi (“Master Sun”), or the Sunzi bingfa, “Master Sun’s Military Methods”. The English title The Art of War comes from early translations and has stuck.

It is very short: 13 chapters in the received version, about 6,000 Chinese characters, which fit into a few dozen pages of English. Each chapter is a series of compact statements and principles rather than stories about particular battles. Almost no names, dates or places appear, which makes the book easy to apply in many different situations and hard to date.

Although it is about war, the book begins with a warning: “War is a great matter of the state, the ground of life and death, the road to survival or ruin; it must be examined with care.” It is less a manual of weapons and drills than a guide to thinking: how to assess a situation, when to fight, when not to, and how to gain advantage while spending as little as possible.

The oldest life of Sunzi was written by the historian Sima Qian in the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji), around 100–90 BCE. According to Sima Qian, Sun Wu was a man of the state of Qi who brought his writings on war to King Helü of Wu. The king, curious, asked whether he could test his methods on palace women.

Sun Wu divided 180 women into two companies and made the king’s two favourite concubines their commanders. He explained the drill, but when he beat the drum the women laughed. He explained again; again they laughed. Sun Wu then said that if orders are clear and still not obeyed, the officers are to blame, and he had the two commanders executed despite the king’s protests. After that, the women performed the drill perfectly. The king, though unhappy, made Sun Wu a general, and Sima Qian credits him with helping Wu defeat the powerful state of Chu and enter its capital.

The story is dramatic and memorable, but historians are cautious. The Zuozhuan, a detailed chronicle of the period that describes Wu’s war against Chu in 506 BCE, never mentions Sun Wu. Many scholars therefore treat the Shiji story as legend, and some doubt that Sun Wu existed at all.

The chapters move roughly from planning before war to action in the field and finally to special topics. Chapter 1, “Calculations”, compares the two sides on five factors: the Way (whether the people are united with their ruler), heaven (weather and seasons), earth (terrain and distance), the commander, and organization and discipline. Chapter 2, “Waging War”, warns about the huge costs of campaigns and states that no state has ever benefited from a long war. Chapter 3, “Planning Attacks”, teaches that the highest skill is to defeat the enemy’s plans, then his alliances, then his army, and only as a last resort to attack walled cities.

Chapters 4 to 6, on “Formation” (xing), “Strategic Advantage” (shi) and “Weak and Strong Points”, deal with how to make one’s own side invulnerable, how to build up momentum like water rushing down a slope, and how to strike where the enemy is empty. Chapters 7 to 9 deal with manoeuvre, adapting to changing situations and moving an army through different landscapes.

Chapters 10 and 11 classify types of terrain and the “nine grounds”, the situations an army can find itself in, from fighting on home soil to being deep in enemy territory with no way back. Chapter 12 discusses attacks with fire, and chapter 13, “Using Spies”, argues that foreknowledge cannot be gained from spirits or calculations of the stars but only from people who know the enemy’s situation.

Calculation before battle. The Sunzi insists that victory is decided mostly before the fighting starts, in the ruler’s temple where the two sides are compared. “The victorious army first wins and then seeks battle; the defeated army first fights and then seeks victory.” Careful assessment, not courage alone, determines outcomes.

Deception. “Warfare is the way of deception,” says chapter 1: when able, appear unable; when near, appear far. Because war is so costly, misleading the enemy about one’s strength and intentions is not cheating but a way to reduce loss of life and resources.

Winning without fighting. The book’s most celebrated principle states that to subdue the enemy’s army without battle is “the best of the best”. The ideal is to keep things whole, the enemy state, its army, even its cities, rather than destroy them. This makes the Sunzi a book about limiting violence as much as using it.

Shi and the orthodox and unorthodox. Shi (勢), a word hard to translate, means the strategic advantage or potential energy that comes from position and timing, like a crossbow drawn tight or a boulder rolled down a steep mountain. The general combines zheng (正), “orthodox” or direct forces that engage the enemy, with qi (奇), “unorthodox” or surprise forces that win the battle; their combinations are said to be endless.

In the earlier Zhou period, warfare in China was largely the business of aristocrats fighting from chariots, guided by codes of honour and ritual. During the late Spring and Autumn period (770–481 BCE) and especially the Warring States period (475–221 BCE), this changed dramatically. States organized large infantry armies of conscripted farmers, fought long campaigns, and developed new weapons such as the crossbow.

These changes created a need for professional commanders and for theory. The Sunzi reflects this world: it speaks of armies of 100,000 soldiers, of the general’s independence from the ruler once in the field (“there are commands of the ruler that are not to be obeyed”), of logistics and the burden of war on ordinary people, and of rewards and punishments to control troops.

The Art of War was one of many military texts of the period. Others include the Wuzi, the Sima fa and the book of Sun Bin, a descendant of Sun Wu who served the state of Qi in the 4th century BCE. Military thought also shared ideas with philosophical schools of the time, and some scholars see affinities between the Sunzi’s emphasis on flexibility and formlessness and the Daodejing.

The imperial library catalogue preserved in the History of the Han (Hanshu) lists a “Wu Sunzi’s Military Methods” in 82 chapters with 9 scrolls of diagrams, far more than the 13 chapters we have. What those extra chapters contained, and whether they were later additions, is unknown.

The received 13-chapter text owes much to Cao Cao (155–220), the powerful warlord and founder of the Wei state at the end of the Han. He wrote the earliest surviving commentary and says in his preface that he edited the text; how much he changed is uncertain. Later scholars added more commentaries, and a Song-dynasty edition collected the notes of eleven commentators.

In the 1080s, under Emperor Shenzong, the Song court compiled the Seven Military Classics (Wujing qishu) for training officers, with the Sunzi placed first. From then on it was the core text of military examinations in China. In Joseon Korea, too, the Seven Military Classics were used in the military service examination (mugwa), and the book was studied in Japan, where the warlord Takeda Shingen famously took his battle banner motto, “swift as wind, quiet as forest, fierce as fire, immovable as mountain”, from chapter 7.

On 10 April 1972, construction workers at Yinqueshan, near Linyi in Shandong province, uncovered two Western Han tombs. Tomb 1, closed in the 2nd century BCE, contained nearly 5,000 inscribed bamboo slips, many damaged. Among them were large parts of the Sunzi’s 13 chapters, some additional passages related to Sunzi not found in the received text, and a long-lost work: the Military Methods of Sun Bin.

The find settled an old question. Because the Hanshu catalogue lists both a “Wu Sunzi” and a “Qi Sunzi”, some scholars had suggested that there was only one Sunzi, and that the book was actually by Sun Bin. Yinqueshan proved that two distinct texts existed in the Han dynasty.

The Yinqueshan version is broadly similar to the received text, with differences in wording and characters. It shows that the 13-chapter core was already established by the early Han. The slips also included other military and philosophical texts, such as parts of the Six Secret Teachings and the Wei Liaozi, and are now held in Shandong.

The Jesuit missionary Jean Joseph Marie Amiot, working in Beijing, published a French version in 1772, which introduced the book to Europe. The first English translation, by Everard Ferguson Calthrop, appeared in 1905, and Lionel Giles’s annotated translation of 1910 became the standard English version for decades. Samuel B. Griffith, a U.S. Marine officer, published an influential translation in 1963.

In the 20th century The Art of War influenced revolutionary and military leaders. Mao Zedong quoted Sunzi’s “know the enemy and know yourself” in his writings on strategy, and Vietnamese commanders drew on Chinese military classics. Military academies around the world now study it, often alongside Carl von Clausewitz’s On War.

Since the 1980s the book has also become a bestseller in business, sports, law and self-help, often reduced to lists of maxims. Scholars caution that many popular versions ignore the book’s historical context and its central concern with the costs of war. Its lasting appeal lies in its short, adaptable principles about competition, information and advantage.

Scepticism about Sunzi is old. In the Song dynasty, the scholar Ye Shi pointed out that the Zuozhuan, which records the major figures of the Spring and Autumn period, does not mention Sun Wu. Later scholars, including those of the 20th-century “Doubting Antiquity” movement, argued that the text belonged to the Warring States period, and Liang Qichao suggested that it might have been written by Sun Bin.

Scholars point to internal evidence for a later date: the book assumes armies of tens of thousands of conscripts, long and expensive campaigns, professional generals separate from the ruler, and weapons such as the crossbow, all features more typical of the 5th–4th centuries BCE than of the late 6th century. On the other hand, its references to the rivalry between Wu and Yue (“the people of Wu and the people of Yue hate each other”) fit the traditional setting in the lower Yangzi region.

Modern positions range widely. Some Chinese scholars defend a Spring and Autumn core that goes back to a historical Sun Wu. Samuel Griffith placed the text in the Warring States period, and Victor Mair has argued that the Shiji biography is essentially fictional and that the text was compiled in the Warring States period, likely by several hands. Many scholars now see the Sunzi as the product of a tradition of military teaching that accumulated over time and was attached to the name of a famous founder, a pattern familiar from other early Chinese “Masters” texts.

Is the Sunzi amoral? Some readers see it as a cold manual of manipulation, endorsing deception and ruthless discipline. Others stress its insistence that war is a last resort, its concern for the people’s welfare, its hope of taking states “whole”, and its list of the general’s virtues: wisdom, trustworthiness, humaneness, courage and strictness. Confucian scholars in imperial China were often uneasy with its emphasis on deception, but the book was never banned and was studied widely.

How is it related to Chinese philosophy? Scholars have compared its concepts, such as shi, formlessness and adapting like water, with the Daodejing and with Legalist ideas about control and rewards and punishments. Some see the military texts as an important source of broader Chinese strategic thought; others caution against reading a single “Chinese way of war” into a diverse tradition.

Translation matters greatly. Key terms like shi (“strategic advantage”, “configuration”, “energy”, “potential”), xing (“form”, “disposition”) and qi/zheng have no exact English equivalents, and different translations can make the text sound either mystical or practical. The Yinqueshan manuscript has also led editors to revise some readings of the received text. Comparing several translations with the Chinese original is the best way to approach the book seriously.

Research on the Sunzi draws on three kinds of evidence. The first is transmitted historical writing: the Shiji biography, the Hanshu library catalogue, the silence of the Zuozhuan, and later anecdotes. These tell us how the figure of Sunzi was remembered in the Han and later, but they were written long after the supposed events and cannot be taken at face value.

The second is the text itself. Scholars examine its vocabulary, grammar and style, the kinds of armies and weapons it assumes, and its relationship to other writings. For example, they compare its ideas and phrasing with the Sun Bin text, the Wuzi and philosophical works such as the Daodejing and the Xunzi, asking which texts borrowed from which. Such comparisons can suggest a relative chronology, though conclusions often depend on assumptions about how ideas developed.

The third is excavated manuscripts. The Yinqueshan slips give a firm point: a text very close to the received 13 chapters existed by the 2nd century BCE. Fragments of other military texts found in Han tombs show that such teachings circulated widely among officers and officials. Palaeographers must reconstruct damaged and disordered slips, and different arrangements can change the reading of a passage. Taken together, this evidence has encouraged scholars to treat the Sunzi less as the work of one man and more as the most successful product of a broader culture of military expertise in early China.