Weiqi: A symbol of the Chinese experience
By David Gosset
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?
As the Chinese renaissance gradually reshapes the 21st century and takes the
global system to another level, understanding China has become a practical
necessity. Instead of continually lecturing in a tone of superiority about what
it poorly frames as an "emerging market", the West would gain much by a more
modest approach: accepting inspiration from a civilization whose resurgence,
far from being a threat, is a contributor to global
equilibrium. As Chinese intellectuals endeavor to reconnect with the universal
message of their traditions, China's humanistic revival is also the promise of
a more harmonious global village.
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.
The chronicle by Japanese writer Kawabata Yasunari (1899-1972) of an intense
intellectual duel, translated in English as The Master of Go, certainly
contributed to the popularity of the game in the West, but weiqi is a
product of Chinese civilization and spread over time in the educated circles of
Northeast Asia. Kawabata, who viewed Master as one of his favorite
creations, knew that for China the game of "abundant spiritual powers
encompassed the principles of nature and the universe of human life", and that
the Chinese had named it "the diversion of the immortals". [1]
In imperial China, weiqi had the status of an art whose practice had
educational, moral and intellectual purposes. In a Chinese version of the
scholastic quadrivium, the mandarins had to master four arts, known as qin,
qi, shu and hua. It was expected of the gentlemen to be
able to play the guqin (qin), a seven-stringed zither, [2] but
also to write calligraphy (shu) and demonstrate talent at brush-painting
(hua).
The second artistic skill, qi, is a reference to weiqi, a
strategy game played by two people who alternately place black and white stones
on the vacant intersections of a grid. The winner is the one who can control,
after a series of encirclements, more territory than his opponent; one can
translate weiqi as "the board game of encirclement" or "the surrounding
game". For centuries, literati have been fascinated by the contrast between the
extreme simplicity of the rules and the almost infinite combinations allowed by
their execution.
Traditionally, the game was conceptualized in relation to a vision of the
world. In the early 11th-century Classic of Weiqi in Thirteen Sections,
arguably the most remarkable essay on the topic, the author uses notions of
Chinese philosophy to introduce the game's material objects: the stones "are
divided between black and white, on the yin/yang model … the board is a square
and tranquil, the pieces are round and active". In Classic of Weiqi, the
famous Book of Changes (Yi Jing), which presents the cosmology of
Chinese antiquity, is quoted several times. [3]
The game, "a small Tao", [4] was so popular that it generated some obsessive
behavior. Addiction to weiqi was considered by the Chinese philosopher
Mencius (372-289BC) one of the five types of unfilial behavior. [5] Through the
centuries, the game remained an important element of Chinese society. Ming
Dynasty painter Qian Gu (1508-78) realized an exquisite masterpiece when, in a
mood of ease and poise, he portrayed A Weiqi Game at the Bamboo Pavilion,
where the breeze, water and young maidens revolve around the circulations of
black and white stones. One of the famous set of 12 screen paintings from the
Emperor Yongzheng period (1678-1735) portrays an elegant and refined lady
sitting beside a weiqi board.
Under criticism during the Cultural Revolution, the game is once again
fashionable among China's elites, and the master Nie Weiping and his disciple
Gu Li, among the top players in the world, are acclaimed celebrities.
As indicated in the introduction of Classic of Weiqi, the Tao of weiqi
cannot be separated from Sun Tzu's Art of War, which stands since the
Warring States Period (476-221BC) as the very foundation of China's strategic
thinking. Mao Zedong used the weiqi metaphor, for example, in his 1938 Problems
of Strategy in Guerrilla War against Japan. [6] In 1969, American
mathematical sociologist Scott Boorman displayed genuine perceptiveness by
using weiqi to interpret Mao's tactical and strategic moves. [7]
While in chess or in Chinese chess (xiangqi) the pieces with a certain
preordained constraint of movement are on the board when the game begins, the
grid is empty at the opening of the weiqi game. During a chess game, one
subtracts pieces; in weiqi, one adds stones to the surface of the board.
In Classic of Weiqi, the author remarks that "since ancient times, one
has never seen two identical weiqi games". [8]
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.
These minimalist axioms create the cognitive conditions to act with maximized
effectiveness. Generally non-confrontational, ready for paradigm change and
fundamentally non-ideological, China is in a process of renaissance,
reinventing its tradition but open to the future. In that sense, the analyst
should not look for a Chinese "model", because Beijing has only an experience
to offer.
In Written in a Dream, polymath and statesman Ouyang Xiu (1007-72), a magister
ludi, [13] captures the depth and mystery of weiqi:
The weiqi
game comes to an end, one is unaware that in the meantime the world has
changed. [14]
Notes
1. The Master of Go, translated from the Japanese by Edward G
Seidensticker.
2. Robert van Gulik's essay "The Lore of the Chinese Lute" (1941) is the best
introduction to the Tao of the qin.
3. The Classic of Weiqi in Thirteen Sections (Qijing Shisanpian),
Section 7 or Section 9. The translation is our own.
4. Ibid. Section 9.
5. Li Lou, Second Part.
6. Mao wrote in the context of the war against Japan: "There are two forms of
encirclement by the enemy forces and two forms of encirclement by our own
-rather like a game of weiqi."
7. The Protracted Game: A Weiqi Interpretation of Maoist Revolutionary Strategy,
1969.
8. The Classic of Weiqi in Thirteen Sections, Chapter 1.
9. Ibid. Section 4.
10. Ibid. Section 4.
11. Sun Tzu's Art of War, "On Momentum" (shi), yi zheng he yi qi
sheng.
12. Ibid. Section 5.
13. Magister ludi, master of the game, title under which Hermann Hesse's
magnum opus The Glass Bead Game (Das Glasperlenspiel) has been
also published.
14. Ouyang Xiu, Meng Zhong Zuo, Verse 3, Qi ba bu zhi ren shi huan.
David Gosset is director of the Euro-China Center for International and
Business Relations at CEIBS, Shanghai, and founder of the Euro-China Forum.
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