Chinese strategic thinking is relational and lies behind the way to deal with various Guanxi in the process of strategy making and conducting. The making of strategy is a three-step process according to Layne (1997). They are: “determining a state’s vital security interests; identifying the threats to those interests; and deciding how best to employ the state’s political, military, and economic resources to protect those interests”. Likewise, the conducting of strategy, as a process to employ a state’s strategic means to handle strategic threats and achieve strategic goals, needs a state to prescribe the guiding principles, specify the key linchpins, and proscribe the counterproductive taboos. Those six aspects together provide us with telling clues about China’s strategic thinking and gaming strategies. And they could be examined by looking into how the Chinese perceive and deal with major Guanxi in the game of Weiqi, though Weiqi resembles more bilateral than multilateral relations. The Chinese relational perceptions, preferences and logic of inference in Weiqi bespeak Chinese strategic thinking.

Strategic Goals

To begin with, a Weiqi player needs to deal with his opponent, Guanxi with whom is his key concern in the whole process of gaming. Even though each player without doubt wants to beat his opponent and win the game, the relationship between win and loss will be the first problem that they have to face, because the final outcome will not be a draw. As discussed above, a skillful Weiqi player aims for relative advantage instead of the total victory that the Chess player does. At the end of a well-matched game, the winner is always difficult to identify by untrained eyes because the relative advantage is probably very marginal. So no reasonable player will expect a landslide victory or defeat in a Weiqi game, unless there is clearly a big gap in skill between two players.

This kind of engagement is comparable to market competition, in which everyone wants a share, bigger or smaller, without denying a share for others. When defining its foreign policy goals, China has frequently exploited the wording of “win–win”, “all-win”, “mutual benefit”, etc. For example, President Xi (2014) states that China “should promote neighborhood diplomacy, turn China’s neighborhood areas into a community of common destiny, continue to follow the principles of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness in conducting neighborhood diplomacy, promote friendship and partnership with our neighbors, foster an amicable, secure and prosperous neighborhood environment, and boost win–win cooperation and connectivity with our neighbors”. A “live-and-let-live” game is at play (see, Su 2013). What the Chinese prefer to achieve is a relative advantage over their opponent no matter how slim the advantage is. As far as the strategic objective is concerned, the Chinese perception is relational and preference relative.

In its competition with the US in the region of Asia–Pacific, China does not expect to expel the American existence down to zero as many American people presume. A zero-sum game contradicts the Chinese mentality. But China does want to curb the negative American influence on China’s national interests. That is why China has always argued that it welcomes the US to play a positive and constructive role in the Asia–Pacific region in various China–US official statements. In terms of the strategic goal, China aims to build, accumulate and maintain a relative advantage of shi vis-à-vis other countries including the US at regional level, and probably at global level as well. Shi is one of the best terms that are uniquely Chinese and better than any concepts in Western international relations theory to express Chinese strategic thinking. To simplify its definition, shi indicates a dynamic situation and the potential direction of development a player is positioned in. Since the Chinese also see shi as the most important factor determining the final result of a game, further discussions of this concept will follow below.

It its history, China has fought many wars in its home region, with both wins and losses as results. But China has never tried to eliminate any of its neighboring countries, or even take their land when China did win, for example in its 1962 war against India and 1979 war against Vietnam. What China has achieved by victory is a better and secured relative advantage of shi vis-à-vis its opponents, who might feel frustrated with a disadvantageous position for quite a long time. To serve this purpose, China does not favor after-victory occupation, which may give its opponents a chance to retaliate. On the other hand, if defeated, as in its war against Japan in 1894 for instance, China will suffer in a disadvantageous position for a very long time, with the tide of gaming not turned until 1945, when China won its war against Japan. Arguably, what the Chinese fight for is not just national interests, but relative advantage in shi.

Strategic Threats

Closely related to the win–loss issue, the second Guanxi in Weiqi is about the relationship between two players. They do not define each other as the enemy to be eliminated as in the game of Chess. Instead they take a neutral stand and do not see each other from a generic perspective as either enemies or friends, but respectful rivals at the least. Most of the time, a Weiqi player sees encirclement by his opponent as a threat. But, because the game itself is about encirclement and counter-encirclement, he will see that threat as normal. And he will not expect to remove the encirclement as a way to remove the threat. With this being said, however, Weiqi players do regard some stones placed by their opponents as enemy acts and do whatever they could to curb or remove them because they might threaten the survival of their own stones. Here, a life-or-death struggle will be at play. But, for masters of Weiqi, even such a must-win fight should and could be avoided.

In its foreign relations, China goes a long way to refrain from defining states with which it has disputes entirely as enemies. Instead, China usually sees anti-China governments as enemies, or their specific anti-China behaviors as hostile. And at the same time China tries to differentiate anti-China people from those who are pro-China in other countries. A relational rather than a generic logic of thinking is implicit in the Chinese way of defining the strategic threat. A “live-and-let-live” game is also at play. Here, the Chinese prefer to avoid naming any opponent as an enemy. For example, China does not define the US as an enemy and even does not see the American political system and ideology per se as threatening. But China does take as a strategic threat the US containment against China’s rise and encircling China with its military engagement along China’s borderlines. US hegemonism and efforts to Americanize its political values are also perceived as threatening to China. This way of strategic thinking partially explains why China does not favor making allies as the US does, since for the Chinese, you make enemies when you make allies. A partnership is thus a better option, lying between an alliance and an enmity (see, Chen 1999).

China, in particular in Mao’s time, did see other countries around the world in a friend-enemy dichotomy and fought with several of its neighboring countries. But China’s use of force in most cases stemmed from China’s reactions for the purposes of survival and independence when its national security faced serious threat (e.g., the Korean War from 1950 to 1953) or when its sovereignty and territorial integrity encountered serious destruction (e.g., the China–India border war in 1962, the China–Soviet Union border conflict in 1969, and the China–Vietnam border war in 1979) while it had no alternative recourse. Such a life-or-death struggle, as a Weiqi player encounters when his opponent’s stones pose a vital threat to his own stones, necessitates China’s aggressive self-defense. But that scenario is more exceptional than normal. It is always what China tries her best to avoid.

Following the same logic of avoiding making enemies, China also refrains itself from Chinanizing other states. China’s underlying way of thinking is that like-mindedness is not a necessary precondition for two countries to make friends and that maintaining good Guanxi with other states is more appropriate and desirable than changing their domestic governance according to China’s internal norms, as well as rules, laws, and institutions. This mind-set has been further strengthened after China adopted the European norm of sovereignty in the mid-nineteenth century. From China’s perspective, diffusing internal norms is somewhat intrusive to the sovereignty of other states and is in breach of the principle of non-interference that China cherishes so much. While China prioritizes good Guanxi with other countries, it does not prefer to make them Chinanized by imposing its internal norms on them. China’s position directly contradicts that of western countries, the EU for instance. The EU and its member states do not see keeping a good relationship with other states as more important than changing them into like-minded entities according to European norms. This mindset has been crucial in the process of European integration, which in turn encourages the EU to insist on this logic in developing its foreign relations. For the EU, national sovereignty has increasingly become a futile notion. Based upon their unique historical experience, Europeans have made efforts to re-conceptualize sovereignty (Pan 2010). They do not believe diffusing their internal norms violates the sovereignty of target states. Instead, they advocate the principle of humanitarian intervention as a replacement of non-interference. Europeans are thus very keen to Europeanize other states according to the norms of the EU.

Strategic Means

When it comes to the strategic means, there are multiple Guanxi the Weiqi players need to deal with. It is not about how many resources one can put into the battle since they are basically the same and equal for the two players, but about how they could employ their resources more efficiently. To win the game, a better Weiqi player should know, among others,

how to deploy his troops as his preferred strategy requires and how to break the opponent’s deployment against his will;

how to build, accumulate and use his own advantage of shi and weaken his opponent’s;

how to encircle the other side and break the encirclement by his opponent;

how to make cost–benefit calculations in short term vs. long term;

how and when to take a defensive posture or an offensive one;

how to control and dominate the game when in an advantageous position and how to turn the battle’s tide and snatch a victory out of defeat when in a disadvantageous position.

The Weiqi player’s thinking about his own deployment is related to the deployment of his opponent, his own positional advantage or disadvantage of shi relative to his opponent’s position, his own striving for encirclement compared to that of his opponent; his own cost and benefit compared to that of his opponent, his short-term concerns compared to his long-term considerations, his defensive posture compared to his offensive posture, his ability to control and dominate the game compared to his chance to change the tide of the battle, and so on and so forth. And a balance of options between two opposite extremes, or the so-called golden mean of the Confucian school, is preferred by most Weiqi players.

In China’s conduct of foreign policies, Chinese perceptions about the strategic means are also relational and do not simply favor some options over other alternatives. More often, China uses its two hands to develop its Guanxi with other countries. The first and soft hand is cooperation, that is, to work with its opponent on the same issue and for the same purpose. The second and hard hand is struggle, that is, to do something against its opponent’s will, making him uncomfortable, or even put him in trouble. For a long time, China has employed those two hands to deal with the US and Japan, for example. With regard to the US, China has made great efforts to build bilateral cooperation on economic interdependence, anti-terrorism, non-proliferation, etc., in the post-Cold War era. Meanwhile, China has also confronted the US to protest its arms sales to Taiwan, receiving the Dalai Lama at a high level, and criticism of China’s human rights record, etc. With Japan, China has maintained pretty good bilateral economic relations and the two countries have supported each other in the process of regionalization. But, after the Japanese government “nationalized” the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, which are in dispute between China and Japan, China has resorted to its hard hand to establish real control of those islands and strengthen its sovereignty claims in the East China Sea by dispatching its maritime patrol vessels and surveillance aircrafts to the surrounding waters and skies in a regular way and by declaring an Air Defense Identification Zone covering that area (Pan 2013).

When using its soft hand, China explicitly requires or implicitly expects reciprocity. From the Chinese perspective, reciprocity means not necessarily equality of exchanges, but equal standing and mutual respect in the process of exchange. So China does not worry whether the two sides will equally benefit from bilateral trade as much as the US does. This is the case even when China suffers from a trade deficit, as with many ASEAN countries for example. When using its hard hand, China will try to avoid confronting its opponent in a tit-for-tat way. China’s space in Asia has been squeezed by the US with its “pivot” or “rebalancing” strategy, and the corresponding Trans-Pacific Partnership initiative, in which China detected a strong implication of containment (Ross 2012). But, China does not simply opt for a countering approach. Instead, China on the one hand continues to reassure the US, as well as other countries around the globe, that it will stick to its path of peaceful development, reiterating that it will strive to build “a new type of major country relationship” with major powers, in particular the US, in order to avoid repeating the historic tragedy of great power politics. At the same time, China has made attempts to pioneer the new space being left as a geopolitical superpower vacuum. China’s most interesting initiatives in this regard are “the Belt and Road Initiative”: the “Silk Road Economic Belt” and the “Maritime Silk Road”. China turns its eyes westward to develop its own shi by offering its neighboring countries economic benefits and sharing the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation with them. While, with the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, China provides Asian countries with alternatives to the US-led TTP, China does not make them choose sides between China and the US. To some extent, every country including the US can opt for China’s initiatives, and China for American ones. This is not to create “a world without the West” as highlighted by some Americans (Barma et al. 2014). Instead, it provides a typical “tit-not-for-tat” solution, underlain by Chinese strategic thinking on gaming.

Strategic Principles

The process of strategy making and conducting is not a one-way street. Since a national strategy is made and conducted in strategic interactions with other states, it must allow enough flexibility. As players in the game of Weiqi, strategic actors should always bear in mind the guiding principles to follow, the key cornerstones to count on, and the gaming taboos to stay away from.

From a Guanxi perspective, a Weiqi player needs to differentiate one game from another, even when against the same player, and one opponent from another in different games. So the general guiding principle could be termed as a contingent adaptation. A brilliant Weiqi player knows how to take and maintain initiatives when in a favorable position and, when otherwise, how to turn the tide on the board to his favor. This requires him to be able to adapt himself to dynamic situations, including the shifting balance of positions between two players, the changing strategy of his opponent, the unexpected and irregular moves of the other side, and even any mistakes made by his opponent and himself alike, etc. On the other side of the same coin, this also requires him to be able to create situations that force his opponent to react in a passive way. As Sun Tzu puts it, “those skilled at making the enemy move do so by creating a situation to which he must conform”. Sun Tzu also emphasizes that “If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.” Those tactics are not just about strategic deception, but more about strategic flexibility and adaptation. A winning strategy in Weiqi as in a real war should be adaptable to and contingent on the ever-changing circumstance.

Facing the end of the Cold War and China’s difficult situation in the international arena after the Tiananmen incident, Deng proposed a tenet of “Taoguang Yanghui and Yousuo Zuowei” (keeping a low profile and getting something accomplished) as the guiding principle of China’s foreign strategy. This tenet may seem self-contradictory to international observers, but it is congruous to Chinese foreign policy makers. And it allows China to be flexible in moving the center of gravity from the first part of the phrase to the second or the other way around, depending on China’s perceptions of its changing position vis-à-vis other countries in the international system. A contingent adaptation is thus favored by the Chinese in their strategic thinking. It is arguably true that China’s strategy from a perspective of this guiding principle is not a real strategy in the strict sense of this term as defined by the West. It is actually a non-strategy.

China’s insistence on the non-interference principle is also contingent, being dictated by China’s dynamic national interest and power, primary concern with regime security and legitimacy, and changing identity and strategic thinking (Pan and Du 2015). Even though the non-interference principle has not been abandoned, the way in which it is applied has changed. As a result of compromises China’s application of the non-interference principle is becoming more inflexible at one end of the spectrum and more flexible at the other, the result being that China’s foreign policies shift back and forth between the two extremes. Sovereignty and regime security are arguably the most decisive factors that force China to maintain the non-interference principle. When they are at stake, China will apply the non-interference principle rigidly, unless there are available alternative ways to make a concession, which will then lead to a somewhat flexible application. If what is at stake are national interests other than sovereignty and regime security China can usually find alternatives to make a concession, meaning that China will invoke the non-interference principle in a more flexible and pragmatic way. In this general pattern, the most important aspect is China’s defense against interference in its own internal affairs, the second one is China’s self-restraint from interfering in the internal affairs of other sovereign states, and thirdly it is China’s opposition to the intervention of a third party state in another third party state’s internal affairs.

Strategic Linchpins

The key cornerstones that a Weiqi player should count on to win a game include strategy and shi, both of which are relational. A game of Weiqi is in nature a game of strategy. One major difference between Weiqi and Chess is that the Weiqi board is empty before players take turns to place stones, while troops are positioned in a fixed default way on the chessboard. Strategic planning is a must for a Weiqi player before he places the very first stone and it must be comprehensive, long term and flexible. A better strategy is the guarantee of a final victory. And here “better” is defined by effectiveness in comparison. No matter how well or poorly designed a strategy may look, it is a good strategy only if it helps a player to achieve his intended goals, and it is a better one only if it helps a player in the game of Weiqi, for example, to lead in initiatives and force his opponent to follow by passive reactions, in other words to create a favorable shi that empowers him to maneuver rather than being maneuvered (Mott and Kim 2006). As explored by Sun Tzu in his Art of War, shi signifies a static configuration of an overall structure on the one hand and a dynamic major tendency and momentum on the other. He contends that shi lies in running water and rolling stones and can wash away anything standing in their way. Shi, which can be best described as a type of “strategic advantage”, is intangible and potential, only visible to well trained strategists. In Weiqi, only by relying on a more favorable shi can a player secure final victory. A game of Weiqi is a continuous competition for shi. So a master of Weiqi usually has many alternative options of winning strategy and knows which to choose and how to change it during games in order to create and maintain a favorable shi vis-à-vis his opponent. In Weiqi, it is impossible and unnecessary to seek a favorable balance of power, because the overall resources that the two players can devote to the Weiqi game do not favor any one, and the balance of power in specific battles on the board varies, which may favor one player in one corner and favor another in another corner. The final defining factor to win or lose in Weiqi is shi, which is power-based but more implicative than the balance of power per se can show.

Chinese leaders prefer to look at the world and China’s position in it from a comprehensive and long-term perspective before they make or change China’s foreign strategies. In the late 1980s, it was Deng’s reinterpretation of the world’s main theme as “peace and development” (Deng 1993, 104–106) that led China’s strategy to shift from “being prepared for war” to opening-up and reform. The initiation of opening-up and reform also helped China to change its statecraft from going against shi to following shi. Deng proposed “Taoguang Yanghui and Yousuo Zuowei” as China’s guiding principle of foreign relations and the “cat” (“white or black, it is a good cat if only it can capture mice”) and the “crossing the river (by touching the stones)” theories concerning national development, all of which was creatively carried out by following generations of Chinese leadership to write the Chinese story of peaceful rise. Rising by following shi, rather than going against it, becomes China’s most important historical experience (Pan 2012).

Thanks to its recent achievement of peaceful rise, China was winning shi when the 2008 global financial crisis broke out. And the crisis in turn further pushed China into a comparatively more favorable position. China acquired a fresh important historic opportunity to open a new chapter for its peaceful rise story due to its relative advantage in economic growth, accelerated process of multi-polarization in the international system, increasing expansion of China’s international influence, and positive change in international views towards China. The Chinese thus perceived a subtle shifting of shi among major powers in the world in favor of China. In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, Yang (2010) offered a broad remapping of the power shift in the world with his theory of “Four Groups of Shi”, among which major emerging countries make a group of gaining shi; the United States belongs to a group of defending shi; the EU, Japan and Russia constitute a group of losing shi; and many developing countries in their difficulties are fighting for their shi. Even though it is hard to justify a major shift in the global balance of power, it makes sense to argue that international relations is regrouping countries according to their possession of shi instead of power. In international competition, China puts emphasis on a relative superiority in strategy and a comparative advantage in shi against its opponents.

Strategic Taboos

In Weiqi, a player must try to avoid counterproductive moves that earn him a little only to cost him a lot. There are many gaming taboos, such as nearsightedness, greediness and impatience. It is nearsighted if a player just focuses on a battle at a part of the board forgetting the whole picture of the game or on a short-term gain or loss without considering its long-term consequences. A greedy player prefers offense to defense and thus is easily lured to be entangled in a probably unnecessary tit-for-tat fight that leads him to lose more then he gains. Impatience could overtake a player when he is clearly in either a favorable or unfavorable situation. For the former, he may become impatient to ensure a bigger victory as quickly as possible. As a result, he might lose his relative advantage in shi and even the game. For the latter, he tends to be impatient and eager to turn the losing momentum around. That might further push him into a more unfavorable position in the balance of shi. A smart player must be coolheaded to resist temptations that might make him nearsighted, greedy and impatient. Those taboos are related to a major Guanxi that is easily overlooked in Weiqi, i.e., how a player faces himself. As argued by Sun Tzu, in a real war a strategic player needs to know himself as he knows his enemy.

To avoid a little gain at the expense of a great loss, China always stresses the overall and long-term development of its relations with other states. For example, when former Chinese Premier Wen (2004) gave an official definition of the China–EU comprehensive strategic partnership, he said, “comprehensive” means that the cooperation should be all-dimensional, wide-ranging and multi-layered. It covers economic, scientific, technological, political and cultural fields, contains both bilateral and multilateral levels, and is conducted by both governments and non-governmental groups; “strategic” means that the cooperation should be long term and stable, bearing on the larger picture of China–EU relations. It transcends the differences in ideology and social system and is not subjected to the impacts of individual events that occur from time to time; “partnership” means that the cooperation should be equal-footed, mutually beneficial and win–win. The Chinese preference favors farsightedness in developing China’s foreign relations.

China has also attempted to be generous and patient. One relevant example here is how China has dealt with its territorial disputes with its neighboring countries in the post-Cold War period. Generally speaking, China has gone out of its way to settle its border disputes with its neighbors on notably generous terms. As Taylor Fravel once put it, in settling 17 of its 23 territorial disputes China usually agreed to take less than half of the contested land (Fravel 2005. See also, Fravel 2008). It is unimaginable, from a Chess perspective, that China would agree to give up parts of its territorial claims when it increasingly became more powerful with ever-growing military strength. But, it is quite understandable from a Weiqi perspective because the Chinese are clear that if every disputant wants a lion’s share of the disputed territory there will be no solution and that by giving up some territorial interests China has harvested not only stable and secure borders, but also friendly Guanxi with its neighbors.

That said, however, little progress has been made in the settlement of the maritime disputes over the China seas. Instead, with patience, China has been adopting a policy of “shelving the disputes and working for joint development” in the hope that acceptable solutions to conflicting sovereignty claims could be found in the future. From a Weiqi perspective, China has good reasons to be reluctant to make the same sacrifice in maritime disputes as it did in land border disputes in order to arrive at peaceful solutions. As Fravel demonstrates, unlike territorial disputes involving land territories, offshore islands are “cheap for the claimants to dispute, requiring few troops to maintain a claim”, and therefore “states are most likely to adopt a delaying strategy to maximize the potential economic and strategic benefits” (Fravel 2005). More than that, the disputed islands are not as divisible as the disputed land. Losing some islands in the China seas will lead China to lose a great deal of shi, which is not the case in the border disputes. So China will not be as generous in maritime disputes as in land border disputes. However, China’s maritime territorial claims are not greedy ambitions that are derived from its improved position in the international system. China’s claims have nothing to do with China’s rising power. China, weak or strong, has always sought to defend its sovereignty over the claimed islands, including Taiwan.