Weiqi: A symbol of the Chinese experience

[FarCenter]

By David Gosset http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LA06Ad03.html

The co-existence of a gigantic bureaucratic state with an overall social plasticity and transformation whose scale has no equivalent in world history is an apparent paradox that puzzles the observer of Chinese society. Why is China so comfortable with change while Western democracies are dangerously lacking in the capacity to question their assumptions and could, in the long term, be threatened by inertia and complacency?

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By considering the board game weiqi (known as go in Japanese and familiar in the West under that name), one of the most significant symbols in the Chinese mental geography, one can develop a better understanding of Chinese dynamics in politics, in business, and even in more trivial social interactions. The Tao of weiqi envelops an esthetic and an intellectual experience that take us closer to Chinese psychology and give us insights on Chinese strategic thinking, but are also, to a certain extent, a way to approach the fundamental patterns of China's collective success. Beyond their ritualistic rigidity, the bureaucrat-mandarins of the Chinese Communist Party are, above all, individuals whose behavior is determined by an underlying cognitive culture that also explains what can appear, at first glance, to be paradoxical.

Using a universally relevant metaphor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to US president Jimmy Carter, wrote in The Grand Chessboard (1997): "Eurasia is the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played." But is Beijing playing chess? In Eurasia and beyond, Chinese strategists are more probably spontaneously designing a series of moves compatible with their own understanding of strategy. While Westerners might navigate a world mapped as a chessboard, the Chinese mind circulates on a weiqi board.

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Three golden axioms expressed in Classic of Weiqi give a stimulating perspective on China's strategic thinking but also on the Chinese mind.

"As the best victory is gained without a fight, so the excellent position is one which does not cause conflict," says the Classic. <9> It introduces what can be called the axiom of non-confrontation. In weiqi, the objective is not to checkmate the opponent: only positions in relation to others really matter. Weiqi's innumerable circumambulations aim at increasing influence without reducing the opponent's forces to nothing. The ability to manage the paradox of a non-confrontational opposition requires the highest emotional and intellectual qualities.

The Classic adds: "At the beginning of the game, the pieces are moved in a regular and orthodox way, but creativity is needed to win the game." <10> What can be named the axiom of discontinuity is a variation on a postulate that is central to Sun Tzu's Art of War: <11> at the beginning of the engagement the action is guided by accepted rules, but victory often requires "irregular" decisions or unorthodox resolution, and only visionary intuition leads to breakthrough. The notion that an unimaginative China would be destined to repeat, imitate, or perform mechanically is a misconception largely based on a partial knowledge of the Chinese world but which, despite the admirable research of British sinologist Joseph Needham (1900-95) in Science and Civilization in China, persists to distort the debate.

The postulate of discontinuity is the very essence of innovation. To a certain extent, Deng Xiaoping's extraordinary concept of "one country, two systems" to engineer Hong Kong's retrocession was an application of this second postulate. Chinese leaders from Beijing and Taipei will also make full use of the second axiom to reinvent their relations in the coming years. China will not only innovate in technology or in business management, but will enrich the vocabulary of political science. Western political, business and opinion leaders have to be ready to act in a world with material or immaterial products not only "made in China" but "created by China".

The Classic mentions a third dimension: "Do not necessarily stick to a plan, change it according to the moment." <12> The axiom of change commands the player to adjust to the situation and to beware of blind adherence to a preconceived system, doctrine or ideology. Deng Xiaoping's emphasis on the necessity to "seek the truth from the facts" profoundly continues this pattern of Chinese strategic thinking. At the diplomatic level, Mao's unexpected rapprochement with Washington in the 1970s was in the spirit of the third postulate.

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[Boojatta]

1. The pieces are moved?

Are we talking about moving a stone from a bag of stones to a fixed point on the board?

The Classic adds: "At the beginning of the game, the pieces are moved in a regular and orthodox way, but creativity is needed to win the game.

[FarCenter]

3. Stones on the board are not moved

Two players take turns placing white or black stones on the intersection of lines on a board. The full-size game has 19 vertical and horizontal lines, or 361 points on which stones can be placed.

Stones that do not form "live" groups can be surrounded by stones of the opposite color and removed from the board.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)

[Odin2005]

2. Great article!

Thanks! :)

[MattBaggins]

4. Yeaaahh. Um.... I'm gonna have to go ahead and say bull pucky overall

Yet another meaningless "how can silly westerners ever fathom the brilliance of the Asian mind" story. They even had to go and invoke the "Godwin's Rule" of mentioning Tzu. Tzu is not the holy grail of learning about strategy and warfare. He is used as a primer; sort of the Doctor Zeus of military training.

"While Westerners might navigate a world mapped as a chessboard, the Chinese mind circulates on a weiqi board." Oh come on the human mind and basic human interaction is the same across the globe. What a load of horse puckey.

Which is stupider; the myth of the "Golden Age" or the myth of the "Mystical Lands of Asia"?