Since the Han Dynasty of more than 2,000 years ago — long before chess was invented — wei-ch’i has been the favorite game of Chinese intellectuals, including generals and politicians.
It’s played on a flat grid of 361 intersections. The two opponents play with pieces, called stones, white vs. black. Unlike chess, black moves first. Also unlike chess, the stones are all the same, and once they are put down, they can never be moved. But they can be removed — if the opposing player succeeds in surrounding them. And that’s the object of the game, to wipe out the foe by surrounding his forces, thus gaining control of the board. Moreover, the popularity of wei-ch’i, which has never caught on in the West, reveals much about the nation that created it. In terms of motion and excitement, wei-ch’i makes chess seem like pinball. After all, the pieces move in chess; even nonplayers can observe an armada of chessmen marching down the 64 squares and realize that something is happening.
By contrast, watching wei-ch’i is more akin to watching a jigsaw puzzle being assembled. In other ways, too, the games are different. In chess, the goal is to control the center. From a strong central position, the player can strike decisively in any direction. But in wei-ch’i the strategy is the opposite; the smart player aims for the corners, the better to surround and destroy the foe.
So what does wei-ch’i have to do with contemporary Chinese politics? One answer came from a Beijing-born professor at Yale, Scott Boorman, who in 1969 published “The Protracted Game: A Wei-ch’i Interpretation of Maoist Revolutionary Strategy.’’ As Boorman notes, Mao Tse-tung (1893-1976), an avid wei-ch’i player, used wei-ch’i analogies as he led the communists to victory in the Chinese civil war of 1927-49. In a 1938 pamphlet he wrote that the struggle was “rather like a game of wei-ch’i,’’ insofar as the communists controlled the countryside (the corners, according to the wei-ch’i analogy) while the nationalists controlled the cities (the center).
Moreover, Boorman continued, “It is fruitful to apply the wei-ch’i analogue to post-1950 insurgent actions in Southeast Asia.’’ Which is to say, to Vietnam, where once again, the insurgents proved to be more patient and strategic than two foreign armies, first the French and then the Americans.
And what about more contemporary issues, such as the fate of Taiwan? Gordon Chang, a Chinese-American attorney who spent two decades working in China, notes that Mao always predicted that China would solve the Taiwan issue in a hundred years. It’s hard to imagine any American politician talking like that, urging patience over such a long-time frame.
Interestingly, in 2001 Chang published a book with a provocative title: “The Coming Collapse of China.’’ By that he prophesied the collapse, within a decade, of the current political system, in which he saw an unsustainable mix of dictatorship and free markets. There’s still time, of course, for Chang to be proven right. But even if the People’s Republic of China were to implode, China would surely survive. Why? Because the basic ethnic and cultural bonds, reaching back 5,000 years, still hold tight. Any country that’s lasted that long knows something about national survival.
For its part, the United States, which finds itself increasingly at odds with China over the Taiwan issue, might wish to give more thought to the principles of wei-ch’i, for the sake of its own national survival. The Chinese can clearly see that they are far behind the United States in military strength. The United States has spent a trillion dollars on nuclear strategic weapons. And no doubt, in the decades to come we are prepared to spend another trillion dollars.
Confronted by that huge gap, what might the Chinese be likely to do? In the spirit of wei-ch’i, the Chinese might decide to play a subtler game. That is, the Americans, being chess players at heart, are preparing for a showdown with China in which Uncle Sam sends a huge material storm down upon China, like a player launching a checkmating attack in chess.
Probably there’s nothing the Chinese can do to thwart such an attack. Except for one thing. What if the Chinese played wei-ch’i at the same time we played chess? In other words, the Chinese might conclude that the Pentagon juggernaut is unstoppable, if an American president pushes The Button. But they might think of another approach to stopping the Americans. They might, for example, note that America has virtually open borders, and a free society within those borders. Which is to say, we don’t have much in the way of homeland security.
So a wei-ch’i player might see the makings of an anti-American deterrence plan — or even a first-strike plan. In the spirit of putting down stones onto a grid, in hopes of forming a winning pattern, why couldn’t the Chinese put down nuclear weapons inside the United States?
Al-Qaeda hasn’t been able to do that, of course, but the Chinese are a lot smarter than Osama’s bunch.
