Stratagem No. 23 第二十三计 Chaos stratagems (混战计)
Befriend the distant, attack the near
Literal
Befriend the distant, attack the near.
Ally with the rival who is too far away to stab you this year, and spend your strength on the neighbour who can.
Source line
形禁势格，利从近取，害以远隔。上火下泽。
Traditional 形禁勢格，利從近取，害以遠隔。上火下澤。
When ground and circumstance block you, the profit is in taking what is near, and the harm is in being cut off by distance. Fire above, lake below: the hexagram Kui (Opposition).
Icons working translation — draft, pending review
Fire above the lake is the hexagram Kui (Opposition): things at a distance pull apart and do not naturally hold. Tie a far state with profit, and take the near ground, because a near ‘friend’ sits under your arm.
三十六计 · Chinese Wikisource edition (public domain)
Meaning
Befriend the distant and attack the near means distance is a cost, not a prestige. The commentary states it as a rule of ground in a messy, many-sided war. A far enemy is hard to strike and easy to rent with a benefit. A near neighbour, treated as a friend while you march past him, turns into a threat in your own flank. The profit is the inch you can stand on tomorrow. The harm is a victory you cannot carry home because someone else’s country lies across the road.
The hexagram picture is fire over the lake, two elements moving away from each other. Alliance with the distant works because the two of you are not yet in each other’s kitchen. It is a truce of convenience, not a marriage. The near front is where land, roads, and grudges actually change hands. Readers sometimes soften this into a manners lesson about being kind to strangers. The text is geographic. It tells you whom to fight first when you cannot fight everyone, and it assumes the distant friend will be a problem later, on purpose.
The story
Fan Ju advises the king of Qin 远交近攻
History
The phrase is a policy spoken to a king, not a proverb that later grew a moral. In the Shiji, Fan Ju, a man of Wei who had survived a beating at home, reached Qin in the middle of King Zhaoxiang’s long reign and at last got a private hearing. Qin’s great nobles were preparing to strike Qi, far in the east, by marching across Han and Wei. Fan Ju told the king this was a way of hauling grain for other people. A small army would not hurt Qi. A large one would exhaust Qin on the road.
Even a victory, he said, would drop the taken land into the laps of the states the army had crossed. He pointed at a recent disaster the king already knew. King Min of Qi had broken Chu, won the fame of a thousand li, and kept not a foot of it, because the ground would not let him. His neighbours then destroyed him. Better, Fan Ju said, to befriend the distant and attack the near. An inch cut from Han or Wei was the king’s inch. An inch taken beyond them was a story. Han and Wei were the hinge of the central states. Hold the hinge, and the far kings would have to come and talk.
The Shiji has the king accept it and make Fan Ju a privileged adviser. Qin’s cuts in the years that followed went into the borders on its doorstep, while the far states were handled with diplomacy, threats, and occasional gifts. The stratagem book calls this a fixed rule of ground. It is. Distance taxes every army, and a neighbour you spare in order to look grand is the neighbour who eats the result. The distant alliance is allowed to be cold. It only has to last until the near ground is yours.
Fan Ju’s speech, including the sentence on befriending the distant and attacking the near, is in Sima Qian’s Shiji, chapter 79, and the year of the audience is unfixed, falling in the middle of King Zhaoxiang’s reign from 306 to 251 BC.
Sources
- Sima Qian, Shiji 史记, ch. 79 (Biographies of Fan Ju and Cai Ze)
Myth check
Often lumped with Zhang Yi’s horizontal alliance, or quoted as Sun Tzu, the sentence is Fan Ju’s, in the Shiji, a generation after Zhang Yi. Zhang Yi did practise Qin diplomacy that split rivals, but he did not coin this rule, and it is not in the Art of War.
Modern application
A company with three rivals does not open a price war against the one on another continent while the one on the same street is taking its customers. The far name can be a partner, a standard-setter, a mutual non-aggression, for as long as the local fight lasts. The alliance should be written so that it can cool later. Pretending it is a friendship is how the near problem gets ignored until it is in the building.
Careers and coalitions follow the map. The colleague in another division can be a useful distant friend while you settle the dispute on your own corridor. Spending your year on a glamorous fight you cannot finish, in a city where you have no base, is Fan Ju’s bad campaign against Qi. Come home with a story and no inch. The inch was next door.
Takeaways
- Fight for ground you can actually hold.
- Rent the distant rival; do not march across friends.
- Treat a near ally on your flank as unfinished business.
How to counter it
If a strong neighbour is suddenly warm while staying vague about the boundary, assume you are the ‘distant’ friend in someone else’s sequence, and ask what they are taking this year, closer to home. Do not lend them a road, a customer, or a vote while that answer is missing.
Questions
What does befriend the distant and attack the near mean?
It means allying with a far rival, who is expensive to fight and easy to rent, while you take territory from the neighbour whose land you can actually keep. Fan Ju gave the rule to King Zhaoxiang of Qin. A victory beyond an unfriendly near state, he said, only feeds the states you marched through. Distance is a cost.
Who invented the strategy of far alliance and near attack?
The named policy is Fan Ju’s, recorded by Sima Qian in the biography he shares with Cai Ze. Qin had been tempted to strike distant Qi across Han and Wei. Fan Ju called that a gift to the states in between. Zhang Yi’s earlier diplomacy is a cousin, not the source of the sentence.