Dragon’s Mind: The Chinese

Strategic View continues ...

To understand why the Chinese look back to the Warring States period of their history, and how they derive modern lessons from it, we need to understand the Chinese intellectual attitude to geo-politics and military strategy, which is also a derivative of their history.

China, a settled agricultural society for a long time, like India, had developed a

culture in which the educated elite administered the country through

their examination-based system of recruitment. The rulers, who were

the emperors of various dynasties, or local rulers whenever China broke

into either two or perhaps three medium-sized empires, or even a

number of small-to-medium-sized states, found this system to be

practical and generally did not disturb it.

The early advent of the

influential thinkers on this subject, in particular Kong Fu-tzi (Confucius) (551-479 BCE), and the application of the Chinese intellect to the administration of states, led to a superiority of the intellectual over the warrior in all Chinese literature.

Understandingly, this bias was often deliberately introduced by the writers, to instill in the minds of readers the assumed superiority of the intellectual class

over the martial class, or of the ‘civil’ arts over the martial arts and

sciences. Thus, an agriculture-based socio-economic system similar to

India’s produced over time an educated and intellectual ‘Mandarin’

class, though this was examination-based rather than strictly hereditary,

with attitudes somewhat similar to India’s ‘Brahmin’ caste, particularly

in respect of its self-assumed superiority.

To be continued...