(today’s Hui Min County, Shangdong Province, China) under the
official title of Sun by the king of the Qi state for his military achieve-
ment in a war against the state of Lu ̈. Over time, the family came to be
known as Sun instead of Tian. Being born into a family of experts on
military and political affairs and living in the state of Qi, which
boasted many great military and political philosophers of the Warring
States Period, Sunzi was blessed with an invaluable rich inheritance
of political and military philosophies and practices. He later came to
the state of Wu and presented to the king of Wu his thirteen chapters
of theArt of war. He became a principal strategist of the Wu state
and is believed to have contributed greatly to its ascendance.
Griffith ( 1971 : 30) contended that we can appreciate the originality
of Sunzi’s thought ‘‘only if we are aware of the qualitative difference
which distinguished warfare of the fifth and fourth centuries from
that of the earlier periods.’’ First, toward the end of the Zhou dynasty,
there was the dissolution of a unified kingdom and the loss of control
of the central government. With the emergence of the Warring States
of multiple lords and kings, there was a deterioration of Confucian
moral standards and an increasing reliance on severe punitive laws
for maintaining social order. The time called for ‘‘a coherent strategic
and tactic theory of a practical doctrine governing intelligence, plan-
ning, command, operation, and administrative procedures’’ and Sunzi
‘‘was the first man to provide such a theory and such a doctrine’’
(Griffith, 1971 : 25). Second, there was the emergence of large-scale
standing armies officered by professionals. In the earlier Ancient
China, battles were fought mainly by four-horse chariots, with foot
soldiers more or less expendable; armies were drafted by the sovereign
kings from noble families for temporary employment in specific
battles. The foot soldiers were typically peasants or serfs, hastily
assembled and poorly trained, led by officers from different noble
families. The Warring States Period, however, witnessed the emer-
gence of large and standing armies formed by the states, composed
of conscripted peasants and disciplined and well-trained troops, and
commanded by professional officers not from noble families. ‘‘These
armies were spearheaded by elite or shock troops specially selected
for their courage, skill, discipline, and loyalty’’; ‘‘Staff included
numerous specialists: weather forecasters, map makers, commissary
officers, and engineers to plan tunneling and mining operations. Others
were experts on river crossing, amphibious operations, inundating,
144 Hai-fa Sun, Chao-chuan Chen, and Shi-he Zhang