ABSTRACT
China has a rich tradition of military writings and a long history of warfare for over two thousand years. In ancient China during the Warring States period, the Military School ( bing jia ) contended for influence on policymakers with other schools of thought including Confucianism, Legalism, Daoism, and Moism. The military corpus continued to grow as subsequent dynasties confronted various security threats. Thousands of military treatises were written over the centuries, many of which were lost, but some survived the test of time. In the eleventh century, the Song Dynasty compiled the Seven Military Classics , including Sun Zi’s famous Art of War . These canonized texts are still widely read today. 1 Military writings aside, official dynastic histories preserved numerous accounts of Chinese warfare. Each of these accounts presented a Chinese perspective-though not necessarily that of China’s adversary-of what had transpired in the war, including the cause of war, the number of troops, war aims, logistics, conduct of war, and casualties. Given the enormous size of the literature, it is not possible to present a comprehensive account of Chinese strategic thought and practice in the space available here. This limitation notwithstanding, we can still identify important recurrent themes in the traditional military writings and actual strategic behaviors.
