Stratagem No. 02 第二计 Winning stratagems (胜战计)
Besiege Wei to rescue Zhao
Literal
Surround Wei, rescue Zhao.
Attack the place an opponent must save, and the offensive they are busy with elsewhere will fold.
Source line
共敌不如分敌，敌阳不如敌阴。
Traditional 共敵不如分敵，敵陽不如敵陰。
Better to divide the enemy than to face them whole. Better to strike their empty point than their full one.
Icons working translation — draft, pending review
Yang here is the enemy where they are concentrated and strong. Yin is the empty place they have left behind. The line prefers splitting a massed enemy, and striking the gap, over a direct collision with their main strength.
三十六计 · Chinese Wikisource edition (public domain)
Meaning
Besiege Wei to rescue Zhao means refusing the battle your opponent has chosen, and threatening the place they cannot afford to lose. You do not march to the siege you were asked to break. You march on the attacker’s own base, which their expedition has stripped. They must then choose between the prize in front of them and the home behind them. Most will turn back, and they will turn back tired, along a road you can now pick.
The classical pair, whole against divided and full against empty, is the logic underneath the place names. Wei and Zhao are one historical case, not a limit on the method. Any strong effort creates a weak spot somewhere else, because troops, attention and money cannot be in two places. The rescue is a by-product. The aim is to fight the enemy after their strength has been pulled apart, on ground that favours the side which stayed still.
The story
Sun Bin at Guiling, 354–353 BC 桂陵之战
History
In 354 BC the state of Wei sent Pang Juan against Handan, the capital of Zhao. Zhao asked Qi for help. King Wei of Qi wanted Sun Bin as general. Sun Bin refused: a man who had suffered mutilation, he said, should not hold the command. The king gave the army to Tian Ji and kept Sun Bin as strategist, riding in a covered carriage. The Shiji says Pang Juan, once Sun Bin’s fellow student, had brought that mutilation on him, having his feet cut and his face tattooed out of jealousy.
Tian Ji was ready to march to Zhao. Sun Bin told him that one does not untangle a knot by striking it, and does not stop a brawl by joining it. Wei’s best troops were wearing themselves out at Handan, and the Wei capital, Daliang, was thin. March there, he said, and Wei would have to let Zhao go. Qi would relieve the siege and meet an exhausted enemy in one stroke. Tian Ji agreed. Wei left Handan. The armies met at Guiling.
Most chronologies put Guiling in 353 BC. Qi won. Why the march worked is plain enough: Wei could not keep a field army at Handan and an empty capital at the same time. The sources do not agree on Pang Juan. The Shiji has him die later, at Maling, in 342 BC. The Sun Bin military text recovered from a Han tomb at Yinqueshan in 1972, in the chapter Capturing Pang Juan, has him taken at Guiling. Guiling’s exact site is also disputed.
The campaign is in Sima Qian’s Shiji, chapter 65; the bamboo Sun Bin text disagrees about Pang Juan’s fate, and Guiling’s site is disputed.
Sources
- Sima Qian, Shiji 史记, ch. 65 (Biographies of Sunzi and Wu Qi)
- Sun Bin Bingfa 孙膑兵法, Capturing Pang Juan 擒庞涓 (Yinqueshan slips, excavated 1972)
Myth check
Sun Bin is not Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu, or Sun Wu, belongs to an earlier generation. Sun Bin is a Warring States strategist, traditionally of the same lineage. This stratagem is not a chapter of the Art of War.
Modern application
A company under siege in one market often has its best people and its cash tied up there. A rival who attacks that market head-on is fighting the garrison. A rival who threatens the product line, the regulatory approval or the key account that actually funds the siege forces a recall. The rescue of the original market is a side effect. The real gain is meeting the opponent after they have split their attention.
The same shape appears in a negotiation and in sport. If the other side is spending everything on one clause or one wing, the useful pressure is on the thing they are not guarding and cannot abandon. The method fails when they truly can abandon it, or when your own base is as thin as theirs. A threat they can ignore is only a march.
Takeaways
- Do not reinforce a fight the other side has already chosen.
- Threaten the base their current effort has stripped.
- Fight them on the road back, when the split is already made.
How to counter it
Before you commit your best strength far from home, decide in writing what loss would make you turn around. A besiege-Wei move works only if that loss is real and unprepared.
Questions
What does besiege Wei to rescue Zhao mean?
It means saving an ally by attacking the attacker’s unprotected base, rather than by marching to the siege itself. In 354 BC Wei besieged Zhao’s capital, Handan. Sun Bin sent Qi against Wei’s capital, Daliang. Wei had to pull back, and Qi fought the returning army at Guiling in 353 BC.
Did Sun Tzu invent besiege Wei to rescue Zhao?
No. The man in the story is Sun Bin, a Warring States figure, not Sun Wu, the Sun Tzu of the Art of War. The episode is told in Sima Qian’s Shiji and, with differences, in the Sun Bin military manuscript found in 1972. The thirty-six stratagems are a much later compilation.