Weiqi vs Chess: The thin ‘red’ line between smart and subtle power

Chess vs Weiqi The thin ‘red’ line between smart and subtle power Gian Luca Atzori Game theory is a tool increasingly popular in psychology, sociology, politics and even in business. Games are what on which kids, and so human beings, begin to face reality and have a feedback from it. The art of a game brings a reflection of a particular society, history or culture. The game of chess was born thousands of years ago in India and has been practiced mainly by intellectuals of the major Indo-European civilization, which contributed in the development of the actual western culture. On the other hand, in China, Korea and Japan the ancient game practiced by intellectuals and aristocrats was the game of weiqi. In China, it was considered a classic art, like calligraphy (shu), painting (hua) and the practice of guqin (古琴). Several scholars and politicians, such as Henry Kissinger and Scott Boorman, found parallelism between chess/weiqi and the political culture of Western/Eastern countries. Although no game can explain the endless twists of international politics, they turn out to be a simplification of reality that can help us to better understand the evolution of the current geopolitical landscape and the strategy of a rising China. When talking about the relation between ancient culture and politics many scholars are critics of their actual mutual influence, especially when facing the inevitable dilemma of comparing an abstract and undefined set of traditional rules to modern concrete political actions and behaviors. Chinese and Western cultures are so old and vast that we can hypothetically justify and relate every contemporary issue to similar past events. However, this paper does not want to demonstrate that modern states behavior is confined to predetermined cultural aspects, rather, it reconsiders a still underestimate key of lecture of reality which can help us to have a more comprehensive vision of it. The game of weiqi (also known as "Go" or "the game of encirclement") has a history of over 4000 years. It is said that the legendary Emperor Yao has invented it before Xia dynasty in order to instruct his playboy son Danzhu. This game is pure expression of Chinese pragmatism and millions of players now enjoy it around the world. Kissinger defines it this way: Where the Western tradition prized the decisive clash of forces emphasizing feats of heroism, the Chinese ideal stressed subtlety, indirection, and the patient accumulation of relative advantage. (…) If chess is about the decisive battle, wei qi is about the protracted campaign .1 In fact, unlike chess, the aim of the game is not the total victory and the decisive disposal, destruction or weakening of the opponent. The aim is a protracted construction of an encirclement by the occupation of much space as possible on the board, through the progressive positioning and opposition of black and white pawns. Chess power is centralized, it arises from the occupation of the center of the board, while is weiqi is more decentralized, power comes from peripheric areas. Chess is individualist and hierarchical, pawns have different values and one is the most important of all the others, while weiqi is more collectivist, all pawns have same value. Chess is a destructive and tactical game and its goal is the total victory on the opponent. Weiqi is instead a constructive game based on pure strategy where self-improvement come first. One try to diminish and destroy the opponent influence while the other one try to subjugate him by increasing its own influence. In fact, if hard power is the nature of chess, soft power is the nature of wieqi. However, if today the concept of smart power advocated by previous US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recall a mix of both soft and hard powers, the strategy of China can be defined as subtle power, a mix of “three minimalist axioms: non-confrontation, non-interference and readiness for paradigm change.”2 The only strategy of chess is to kill the opponent’s king and there are different techniques to achieve this goal. 1 Henry Kissinger, On China, (New York: The Penguin Press, 2011), pp. 29-31. 2 David Gosset, “Smart, soft and subtle,” China Daily, June 1, 2011, p. 46. Weiqi vs Chess: The thin ‘red’ line between smart and subtle power | Gian Luca Atzori The strategies of weiqi are numerous and they are more indirect compared to chess, avoiding a confrontational opposition. The indirect confrontation is indeed a feature of both Chinese politics and culture. In an interview, Dr. David Lai3 said, “Weiqi is a living reflection of Chinese culture – its strategy, thought, philosophy and operational tactics. One can almost read The Art of War and then play it on the board.”4 The reference to Sunzi’s “The Art of War” is not causal. The famous words of master Sun are still an inspiration after thousands of years: "to fight and conquer in all battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consist in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting."5 These kinds of paradoxes are recurrent in Chinese philosophy. As for Sunzi it is possible to win a war without fighting, for Laozi it is possible to govern and live without acting, or teaching without even speaking: “The sage relying on actionless activity (wu wei) carries on wordless teaching."6 The ability to manage these paradoxes requires considerable intellectual and emotional capabilities. In a world of growing interdependence, this strategy of non-confrontational opposition is crucial. It is no coincidence that China has achieved such a prestigious position on the global stage without any international military intervention. For Sunzi military intervention is the last resort, there is no better approach to persuade your enemy than to be invincible, and falling into direct confrontation and military action is merely a way to reiterate what politics has failed to show. There are many real-world applications of these principles from the long Chinese Civil War, to more delicate and actual events as the Middle Kingdom's policy towards Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Chinese interests in Afghanistan and Africa, or the recent change of foreign policy acted by the government of Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang. Those are just a few examples. In 1969, Scott Boorman published his book The Protracted Game: A Wei-Ch'i Interpretation of Maoist 3 Dr. David Lai is a Research Professor of Asian Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) of the U.S. Army War College (USAWC). 4 Micheal Posner, “Weiqi: the game that holds China’s key to world domination,” The Globe and Mail, June 10, 2011, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/munk-debates/weiqi-the-game-that-holds-chinas-key-to-worlddomination/article598664/ 5 Sun Tzu (trans. by Lionel Giles), The Art of War, (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 2002), p. 48. 6 Arthur Waley, The Way and its power: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching and its place in Chinese thought, (New York: Grove Press, 1958), p. 143. 2 Weiqi vs Chess: The thin ‘red’ line between smart and subtle power | Gian Luca Atzori Revolutionary Strategy, which analyze revolutionary strategies of Mao during the Civil war and the War in Vietnam under the lens of weiqi. In 1938, in his important essay Problems of Strategy in Guerrilla War against Japan, Mao wrote: Thus, there are two forms of encirclement by the enemy forces and two forms of encirclement by our own--rather like the game of wei-ch'i. Campaigns and battles fought by the two sides resemble the capturing of each other's pieces, and the establishment of strongholds by the enemy and of guerrilla base areas by us resembles moves to dominate spaces on the board. It is in the matter of "dominating the spaces" that the great strategic role of guerrilla base areas in the rear of the enemy is revealed.7 The Maoist strategy recalls weiqi in several aspects. For instance: the struggle is voluntary protracted for many years and in the early stages the most valuable areas are the periphery, while chess power derives from the occupation of the center of the board and seeks a fast victory. The control of the majority of the territory rather than specific locations determine victory and areas of comparable size/value are interchangeable. Simultaneous deployments of a larger number of smaller units are more effective than a smaller number of more powerful units, because in weiqi all pawns have the same value. However, for Mao, the revolution was most likely turn out to be a very measured combination of chess and weiqi, because he was aiming to the total victory and destruction of their opponent: Japan and Nationalists. Today the weiqi strategy is more calculated. The strategy of “one nation, two system” of Deng about Hong Kong is a perfect example. China reconquered Hong Kong without even a bullet shot or a direct confrontation, but with a protracted campaign, ready to make an agreement that last 50 years just to have it back. Taiwan similarly is a good example. Chinese diplomacy and investments in Australia made Camberra’s officials publicly say, “though allied to the United States, it would not be an automatic partner when it came to Taiwan.” 8 The same could be said about Chinese interests in Africa, Dr. Lai stated that: “You can make an argument that Chinese moves in Africa, South America and Eastern Europe can eventually come together to promote its grand strategy.”9 The war in Afghanistan is an excellent food for thought as well, and seems to recall an old saying in Chinese bureaucracy: “Wars between ‘barbarians’ are auspicious for China.” 10 In fact, while the US are significantly weakened by the war and are preparing for the withdrawal of troops, China is already preparing a post-war policy. This is because, for China, Afghanistan is not only an excellent source of natural and mineral resources and a great hall to ensure its interests in Pakistan while competing against India, but also a matter of national security, given the possible influence of the Taliban in the already “problematic” Muslim Chinese province of Xinjiang. Finally, the change of foreign policy strategy implemented by the Chinese government is unprecedented in the history of the People Republic. According to Yan Xuetong 11 The taoguangyanghui (Keeping a Low Profile) policy of Deng Xiaoping has been replaced by the fenfayouwei (Striving for Achievements) policy of Xi Jinping. He underlines how this policy of openness has reduced ambiguities and puzzlements of other countries about international 7 Shawn Conners, ed. Collected writings of Chairman Mao: Volume 2 – Guerrilla Warfare, (El Paso, TX: EL Paso Norte Press, 2009), p. 175. 8 Posner, “Weiqi: the game that holds China’s key to world domination.” 9 Ibid. 10 Kissinger, On China, p. 27. 11 Yan Xuetong is Dean of the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua University and the Chief Editor of The Chinese Journal of International Politics (Oxford University Press). 3 Weiqi vs Chess: The thin ‘red’ line between smart and subtle power | Gian Luca Atzori relations with China, leading to improved economic and political relations with the US, the EU and many other countries around the globe. 12 Through this policy, China has significantly increased its relations with international partners aiming for, as posited by Yan, “making friends” rather than only “making money”13, and in this process of "conquest of space" and "encirclement", Chinese SEOs are playing a leading role. 14 This type of policy fully recall a game of weiqi at geopolitical and global stages. In one of his speech, Xi Jinping said, “Surrounding area is strategically extremely important to our country in terms of geography, natural environment and mutual relations.”15 Part of the New Chinese Dream promoted by Xi is the New Silk Road (Img 2), a project wants to re-assert ancient Silk Road former prestige through those eight thousand kilometers that separate and unite the cradles of Western and Eastern civilization. The One Belt One Road (OBOR) project is an investment worth over $140bln that aims to connect more than 25 countries through the construction of new maritime and land infrastructural corridors between China and Europe.16 Does not it recall an encirclement characteristic of an accurately planned weiqi strategy? However, despite the success of this strategic policy, there are many doubts about its long-term efficacy, which derived from the possible side effects that an encirclement based on a nonconfrontation and non-interference strategy could cause. Doubts relative, for instance, to the sustainability of the unprofitable economic growth of SEOs and political challenge of neoLeninist elitism.17 Internationally, other factors can hail from the increasing threat of fundamentalist terrorism and security issues; the hegemonic confrontation with US and international obligations; the Chinese relations with unstable governments or dictatorship around the world, or even the process of liberalization and democratization of which China can be affected. China has adapted itself to Western contexts more often than the US or EU to Eastern cultures. The Communist party is the thin “red” line 18 between the two games: if two countries are playing different games, if the whole world plays the game of chess, could China, when its power will be really at risk, break in and force a new game and new rules? Will be 12 Yan Xuetong, “From Keeping a Low Profile to Striving For Achievements,” The Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 7, No. 2 (2014), pp. 153-184. 13 Ibid. p. 166. 14 James McGregor, No ancient wisdom, no followers: the challenge of Chinese authoritarian Capitalism (Westport, CT: Prospecta Press, 2012), p. 3. 15 Ibid. p. 167. 16 Reid Standish and Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, “Follow the roads, railways, and pipelines of China's New Silk Road”, Foreign Policy, May 7, 2015. 17 Minxin Pei, “The dark side of China’s rise,” Foreign Policy, (March-April 2006), pp. 32-40. 18 “The thin red line” is an epic war film and novel, a fictionalized version of the Battle of Mount Austen in the Pacific Theatre of WWII between US allies and Japanese Empire. The titles comes from Kipling’s poem “Tommy” (Barrack-Room Ballads) based on the action of a British soldier during the Battle of Balaklava (Crimean War 1854) called “The thin red line” from the red British uniforms and the thinly spread military unit firmly holding against attack. It is now an English figure of speech and a military metaphor. 4 Weiqi vs Chess: The thin ‘red’ line between smart and subtle power | Gian Luca Atzori more convenient for China to adapt itself again and try to win the game by seeking a checkmate or this time will be the west having to learn new rules? In 2002, psychological studies (PET and fMRI studies) have been made on the game of chess and weiqi. In addition to having caught a glimpse of increased brain activity and a natural prevention of Alzheimer disease in elder weiqi players, 19 seems that when playing weiqi the brain tends to lateralize (even if modestly) to the right lobe of the brain (the holistic side) while it tends to lateralize to the left brain (the analytical side) when playing chess. 20 A game is more creative and strategic when the other one is more analytical and tactical. One is constructive and the other one is destructive. For the same theory of yin yang, seems that chess and weiqi are a perfect example of “complementarity of opposites”. They turned out to be both carriers of two different cultures and civilizations between East and West, and both fundamental in the field of foreign policy. Their meeting seems to be an important opportunity for mutual improvement. Perhaps it is time that our leaders prepare their boards and discover the greatness of both games, hoping they can eventually find the inspiration to relegate and to play war only where war should stay, on board games. Gian Luca Atzori 陆晓波 2014280091 19 Joe Varghese et al., “Leisure activities and the risk of dementia in the elderly,” The New England Journal of Medicine, June 19, 2003, pp. 2508-16. 20 Chen Xiangchuan et al., “A functional MRI study of high-level cognition: II. The game of GO,” Cognitive Brain Research, Vol. 16, No. 1 (March 2003), pp. 32-37. 5