Opinion | From Aukus to Nato and the EU, there are plenty of lessons from China’s Warring States period
- The Alliance of the Six Kingdoms once sought to take on a sole superpower, Qin: there are direct parallels today with the Western Bloc and China
- And while Chinese leaders have a long tradition of strategic thought, they should bear in mind that other nations have experience with history, too
Some time during the 4th century BC, two young men set out to seek fame and fortune in a chaotic China. They were close friends and had studied together, and together they waved their master goodbye.
Their names were Su Qin and Zhang Yi. And this was the period in Chinese history known as the “Warring States”, when seven kingdoms – Qin, Qi, Chu, Yan, Han, Zhao, and Wei – vied for supremacy. Ambitious men such as Su and Zhang travelled across China to offer their services as advisers to the various kings, in the manner of Machiavelli. When the friends came on the scene, one of the kingdoms, Qin, was growing into a superpower that threatened to overwhelm all the others.
In the service of Zhao, Su proposed a grand alliance of the Six Kingdoms against the lone superpower. He took the proposal to each of the other potential allies and, one by one, convinced them to join.
Meanwhile, Zhang went to the kingdom of Qin. In time, he offered Qin the strategy for defeating the Alliance of the Six Kingdoms: offer bilateral relations to individual members of the six to tempt them away. In the long run, Zhang’s strategy succeeded, and the Qin conquered the Six Kingdoms to unify China into the Qin Empire.
