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Mao Tse-tung and the Art of War

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Sun Tzu: The Art of War. Translated and with an Introduction by GriffithSamuel B., with a foreword by HartB. H. Liddell. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963. xvi, 197. $5.60.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Scott A. Boorman  and
Howard L. Boorman
Scott A. Boorman
Affiliation:
Mill River, Massachusetts
Howard L. Boorman
Affiliation:
Mill River, Massachusetts
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , November 1964 , pp. 129 - 137
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Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1964

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References

1 More accurately, Sun Wu.

2 Sun Tzu: The Art of War (Oxford, 1963)Google Scholar.

3 Mao Tse-tung on Guerrilla Warfare (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; The Battle for Guadalcanal (Philadelphia, 1963)Google Scholar.

4 See “The Glorious Military Thought of Comrade Mao Tse-tung',” Foreign Affairs, 42.4 (July, 1964) 669–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 The Giles translation has been reprinted twice in the United States by the Military Service Publishing Company, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: as one chapter in Major Thomas R. Phillips (ed.), Roots of Strategy (1941), and as a separate book entitled Sun Tzu Wu, The Art of War (1944).

6 Three Military Classics of China (Sydney, 1944).

7 Because of the different systems used in numbering sections of the original text, references given below to the two principal English translations (Griffith's volume under review and Giles, SanTzu on the Art of War, London, 1910)Google Scholar are to pages. References to Mao's, writings are to Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-tung (Peking, 1963)Google Scholar.

8 Kuo Hua-jo, “Sun-tzu ping-fa ch'u-pu yen-chiu,” appeared in the Chün-cheng tsa-chih (Military-Political Magazine) of the Eighth Route Army in 1939. See Hua-jo, Kuo, Sun-tzu ping-fa (Peking, 1962), 5.Google Scholar

9 Translation as given in Selected Military Writings, 86. Griffith's version, taken from Mao, Selected Works, I, 187, differs slightly. Still another reference to this axiom of Sun Tzu as a “scientific truth” appears in Mao's On Protracted War of May 1938 (Selected Military Writings, 238).

10 In English, the most convenient body of material is that edited by the Foreign Languages Press, Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-tung (Peking, 1963), which contains twenty-nine important speeches, articles, and directives covering the period from October 1928 to April 1949. In Chinese, a useful selection of passages from Mao's writings dealing with military affairs has been prepared by the Honan branch of the China Historical Society in its periodical, Shixue yuekan (Shih-hsueh yueh-k'an), published at Kaifeng by the Honan People's Publishing Company. References on “war” appear in part 4 of the compilation, Shixue yuekan. No. 2, February 1959, 19–33.

11 See the two papers by Bobrow, Davis B., “Peking's Military Calculus,” World Politics, XVI.2 (January 1964)Google Scholar and “Mao's Military Model” (Princeton: Center of International Studies, mimeographed, n.d.).

12 This review article does not attempt to survey the growing literature in English on Peking's nuclear doctrine.

13 (New York, 1963). Major O'Ballance is also the author of “The Armed Might of Red China,” Military Review, XL. 8 (November 1960), 33–42.

14 (Peking, 1959).

15 (New York, 1940). Carlson also wrote The Chinese Army: Its Organization and Military Efficiency (New York, 1940)Google Scholar.

16 Clubb, O. Edmund, 20th Century China (New York, 1964)Google Scholar; Johnson, Chalmers A., Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: the Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1937–1945 (Stanford, 1962)Google Scholar; Liu, F. F., A Military History of Modern China, 1924–1949 (Princeton, 1956)Google Scholar. The volume by ColonelRigg, Robert B., Red China's Fighting Hordes (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 1951)Google Scholar, is flashy and journalistic, reflecting limited understanding of China and less of the Chinese Communists.

17 Aside from the works cited below, specific mention should be made of the interesting paper by Bondurant, Joan V., “Paraguerrilla Strategy: a New Concept in Arms Control;” in Singer, J. David (ed.). Weapons Management in World PoliticsGoogle Scholar, proceedings of the International Arms Control Symposium held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, December 17–20, 1962, published in the joint issue of The Journal of Conflict Resolution, VII.3 (September 1963)Google Scholar and the Journal of Arms Control, I. 4 (October 1963), 235CR–245CR.

18 The first and in some respects still the best theoretical analysis is the paper by Katzenbach, Edward L. Jr. and Hanrahan, Gene Z., “The Revolutionary Strategy of Mao Tse-tung,” which appeared in the Political Science Quarterly, LXX.3 (September 1955), 321–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Others who approach the subject with understanding of the Chinese environment are Hanrahan, Gene Z. (ed.), Chinese Communist Guerrilla Tactics (Washington: Department of the Army, 1952, mimeographed)Google Scholar; Chiu, S. M., Chinese Communist Revolutionary Strategy, 1945–1949 (Princeton: Center of International Studies, Research Monograph No. 13, 1961)Google Scholar; and Hinton, Harold C., “Political Aspects of Military Power and Policy in Communist China,” in Coles, Harry L. (ed.), Total War and Cold War (Columbus, Ohio, 1962), 266–92Google Scholar.

19 Though the only point of which the bibliographer of guerrilla warfare may be certain is that his listing will be outdated before it is published, the following are representatives of the genre: Dixon, Brigadier C. Aubrey, and Heilbrunn, Otto, Communist Guerrilla Warfare (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; Fall, Bernard B., Street without Joy: Insurgency in Indochina, 1949–1963, third rev. ed. (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 1963)Google Scholar; Garthoff, Raymond L., “Unconventional Warfare in Communist Strategy,” Foreign Affairs, XL.4 (July 1962), 566–575CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Giap, Vo Nguyen, People's War, People's Army (New York, 1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lt. Col., T. N. Greene, USMC (ed.), The Guerrilla—and How to Fight Him, selections from the Marine Corps Gazette (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; Che Guevara on Guerrilla Warfare, with introduction by Peterson, Harries-Clichy, Major, USMCR (New York, 1961)Google Scholar; Heilbrunn, Otto, Partisan Warfare (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; Johnson, Chalmers A., “Civilian Loyalties and Guerrilla Conflict,” World Politics, XIV.4 (July 1962), 646–661CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Knorr, Klaus, “Unconventional Warfare: Strategy and Tactics in Internal Strife,” in Zawodny, J. K. (ed.), “Unconventional Warfare,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 341 (May 1962), 53–64Google Scholar; Lindsay, Frank A., “Unconventional Warfare,” Foreign Affairs, XL.2 (January 1962), 264–274CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marine Corps Gazette, special issue on guerrilla warfare, Vol. 46. 1 (January 1962); Franklin Mark Osanka, (ed.), Modern Guerrilla Warfare, with introduction by Huntington, Samuel P., “Guerrilla Warfare in Theory and Practice” (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; Paret, Peter, and Shy, John W., Guerrillas in the 1960's (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; Tanham, George K., Communist Revolutionary Warfare: the Vietminh in Indochina (New York, 1961)Google Scholar; United States Naval Institute, Studies in Guerrilla Warfare (Annapolis, 1963)Google Scholar.

20 See, for example, Dinerstein, Herbert S., War and the Soviet Union, rev. ed. (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; Erickson, John, The Soviet High Command (London, 1962)Google Scholar; Fedotoff-White, D., The Growth of the Red Army (Princeton, 1944)Google Scholar; Gardioff, Raymond L., Soviet Military Doctrine (Glencoe, Illinois, 1953)Google Scholar and Soviet Strategy in the Nuclear Age, rev. ed. (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; Hart, B. H. Liddell (ed.), The Red Army (New York, 1956)Google Scholar; Sokolovskii, V. D. (ed.), Soviet Military Strategy, translated and edited by Dinerstein, Herbert S., Goure, Leon, and Wolfe, Thomas W. of the RAND Corporation (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1963)Google Scholar; and other works.

21 (New York, 1963).

22 (New York, 1964).

23 On ancient weaponry, see, for example, Loehr, Max, Chinese Bronze Age Weapons (Ann Arbor, 1956)Google Scholar, and Wei, Chou, Chung-kuo ping-ch'i shih-k'ao (Draft History of Chinese Weapons, Peking, 1957)Google Scholar. Recent examples of the sinological approach easily available in English include Chao-ying, Fang, “A Technique for Estimating the Numerical Strength of the Early Manchu Military Forces,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, XIII (1950), 192–215Google Scholar, and Lien-sheng, Yang, “Hostages in Chinese History,” in his Studies in Chinese Institutional History (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1963), 43–57Google Scholar. Some aspects of Chinese Communist military affairs are dealt with in the special issue of The China Quarterly, No. 18, (April–June 1964).

24 There are, for examples, no atlases comparable to the superb West Point productions: ColonelEsposito, Vincent J., The West Point Atlas of American Wars (New York, 1959)Google Scholar, and Brig. Gen. Vincent J. Esposito (Ret.) and ColonelElting, John Robert, A Military History and Atlas of the Napoleonic Wars (New York, 1964)Google Scholar. Nor are there any first-class examples of military history or biography comparable to Howard, Michael, The Franco-Prussian War: the German Invasion of France, 1870–1871 (New York, 1962)Google Scholar, White, Jon Manchip, Marshal of France: the Life and Times of Maurice, Comte de Saxe, 1696–1750 (Chicago, 1962)Google Scholar, and Barnett, Corelli, The Swordbearers (New York, 1964)Google Scholar.

25 Tsung-t'ang, Tso: Soldier and Statesman of Old China (Shanghai, 1937)Google Scholar. Colonel Bales points out that Tso is one of the rare figures in military history who gained his training in the field and at a time of life when the careers of many of the world's great captains had already ended.

26 The Rise of Chinese Military Power, 1895–1912 (Princeton, 1955)Google Scholar.

27 These three volumes were prepared by Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sundcrland: Stilwell's Mission to China (1953), Stilwell's Command Problems (1956), and Time Runs Out in CBI (1959).

28 Taiheiyō senso e no michi (The Road to the Pacific War, Tokyo, 1962–63) and others. See the review article by Iriye, Akira in The Journal of Asian Studies, XXIII.1 (November 1963), 103–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.