Chinese people; at times, the goal appears to be to defeat enemy forces in a
decisive manner on the field of battle; at other times, the goal may be both.
A famous instance in ancient Chinese history is how T’ien Tan rescued the
state of Ch’i in the Warring States Period. The city of Chi-mo was besieged for
five years. The situation was dire and the defenders were desperate. T’ien Tan
made careful preparations for a surprise spectacle worthy of a Hollywood epic.
He orchestrated a series of strange moves to puzzle and confuse the besieging
army. The culmination was a consummate night-time performance complete
with lights, flashy costumes, and sound effects. These theatrics were conducted
with military precision and in deadly earnest, all to maximum effect. T’ien Tan
instructed the people to dress a thousand cattle in bright red cloth decorated with
‘five colored dragon veins’. Razor-sharp blades were securely attached to the
horns of each beast and oil-soaked torches were firmly bound to their tails. The
defenders quietly made multiple breaches in the city walls. Then, at the appointed
hour one night, the cattle were sent stampeding out through the breaches with
torches alight, closely pursued by silent soldiers ready for combat. The inhabi-
tants in the city provided eerie background music by clanging metal implements
together and beating drums. The supernatural spectacle of what appeared to be
hundreds of dragons charging the stirring encampment and drawing blood from
every sleepy soldier they came in contact with so terrified the besiegers that they
fled in fear. This dramatic victory is listed as one of theThirty-Six Stratagemsand
one of theOne Hundred Unorthodox Strategies. 68
Symbolic victory and military success were both important in dynastic China
and ultimate triumph depended on campaign follow-through. Perhaps no more
so than in the so-called Tumu incident of 1449 when the Ming emperor’s chief
adviser anticipated an easy victory over Mongol forces. This excessive optimism
led Wang Zhen to persuade the Emperor Zhengtong (r. 1435–49) to come and
witness the successful campaign first-hand. With an estimated half a million
soldiers, the emperor set out from Beijing to the steppe. A series of costly mistakes
and inept leadership resulted in a dramatic Mongol victory over the Chinese
expeditionary force in August 1449. Instead of a symbolic Ming victory, the
outcome was a Mongol battlefield victory in which the Chinese emperor was
taken captive and his chief adviser killed. Yet complete victory in the campaign
eluded the Mongols, who proved unable to leverage their important prisoner to
any advantage. The Ming court did not capitulate; instead, it simply abandoned
the captured emperor and enthroned a new one. Meanwhile, the Mongols swept
down on Beijing in October but, unable to capture the Ming capital, they
returned virtually empty-handed to the steppe. 69 Battlefield triumph and sym-
bolic victory did not translate into campaign success in this instance.
In the contemporary era as well, war fighting was about spectacles as well as
campaigns and battles of annihilation. The so-called border conflicts with India
(1962), the Soviet Union (1969), and Vietnam (1979) were not so much about
acquiring or defending disputed territory as they were about demonstrating
China’s resolve to an adversary. While border disputes did in each case signifi-
cantly figure in Beijing’s decision to go to war, the overriding goal behind each
The Chinese Way of War 213