Stratagem No. 24 第二十四计 Chaos stratagems (混战计)
Borrow a road to conquer Guo
Literal
Borrow a road to attack Guo.
Ask a weaker neighbour for a road through his land, then take the neighbour too once the real enemy has fallen.
Source line
两大之间，敌胁以从，我假以势。困，有言不信。
Traditional 兩大之間，敵脅以從，我假以勢。困，有言不信。
Set between two great powers, they are coerced by the enemy into obedience; I lend them an appearance of support. The hexagram Kun (Oppression): there are words, but they are not believed.
Icons working translation — draft, pending review
This Kun is Oppression, lake drained under water, not the trigram Earth, and its judgement says that in extremity words are not believed. The borrower does not rely on the speech either: he relies on the small state’s hope of being spared, and he moves before that hope can organise.
三十六计 · Chinese Wikisource edition (public domain)
Meaning
Borrow a road to conquer Guo means you ask a weaker state that sits between you and your real target for passage, and you destroy the target, and then you destroy the state that lent the road. The commentary says pretty words will not do it. The small state must already be squeezed, so that refusing you means being crushed by both sides at once. The enemy threatens them. You promise you are not a threat. They choose the promise because they want to survive the week.
Speed is part of the trick. Once your army is on their road, inside their gates, eating their grain, they no longer have a formation of their own. The classical line’s ‘words are not believed’ cuts both ways. They should not have believed the promise. You should not have depended on the promise either. What works is the situation: a state that thinks one concession will buy it a future, faced with a neighbour who only needed the concession long enough to come and go. The going is the campaign.
The story
Jin borrows the road, 658–655 BC 假道伐虢
History
Guo and Yu were small states, each the other’s outer wall. Duke Xian of Jin wanted Guo. In 658 BC his minister Xun Xi told him not to smash in. He sent Yu the horses of Qu and the jade disk of Chuiji, treasures the duke hated to lose, and he asked for a road. Xun Xi said the gifts were only moving to an outer storehouse: grant the road, and Jin would collect them again with the country. The duke feared Yu’s minister Gongzhi Qi, who could see it. Xun Xi said Gongzhi Qi was too soft a remonstrant, and too close to his master, to be obeyed. Jin took the road and captured Guo’s city of Xiayang.
In 655 BC Jin asked again. This time Gongzhi Qi spoke the line that outlived both states. Guo, he said, was Yu’s screen. Lips gone, the teeth are cold. A first loan was already too much; a second was a habit. The duke answered that Jin and Yu were the same ancestral clan and would not harm each other. Gongzhi Qi said Jin had already ended other clans of that blood, took his family, and left, with the remark that Yu would not last until the winter sacrifice. The duke lent the road again.
Jin passed through, destroyed Guo at Shangyang, and the duke of Guo, Chou, fled to the Zhou capital, as the stratagem commentary says. On the way home the Jin army turned and ended Yu, and took its duke. The gifts came back to Jin’s stores. Yu had believed that a concession, a clan name, and a pair of treasures were a future. They were a passage. The stratagem’s whole point is the second blow, the one that falls on the lender, who by then has no wall and no formation left.
Both requests, Gongzhi Qi’s remonstrance, and the fall of Guo and Yu are in the Zuo zhuan under Duke Xi, years 2 and 5, that is 658 and 655 BC, and the commentary’s note that Duke Chou of Guo fled to the Zhou capital matches that account.
Sources
- Zuo zhuan 左传, Duke Xi, years 2 and 5
- Sima Qian, Shiji 史记, Jin hereditary house
Myth check
Sometimes told as if a clever duke invented a metaphor, it is two dated campaigns in the Zuo zhuan, and the lesson is what happens to the state that lends the road. The story is not in the Art of War.
Modern application
The business shape is a stronger firm asking a small partner for distribution, data, or a corridor to reach someone else, with a speech about a shared enemy. The first concession looks like a contract. The second, once the real target is dealt with, is a term sheet for the partner itself. Any ‘temporary’ access that puts their people inside your operation is the road. Temporary is the word Yu believed.
In office politics the road is an introduction, a shared vendor, a vote lent ‘just against that other proposal’. The lender thinks the alliance is the point. The borrower thinks the lender’s independence was the obstacle after next. The defence is Gongzhi Qi’s, and it has to be early: if your neighbour’s fall leaves you with no wall, the loan is the campaign.
Takeaways
- Treat a request for passage as a request for you.
- Refuse the second loan even if the first one worked.
- Do not trade your outer wall for a gift.
How to counter it
When a stronger neighbour asks to cross your ground ‘only’ to reach someone else, assume the return journey is aimed at you, and if their fall would leave you exposed, refuse in public. Gifts and a shared name are not a guarantee.
Questions
What does borrow a road to conquer Guo mean?
It means asking a weaker neighbour for passage so you can attack someone beyond him, and then destroying the neighbour on the way back. Jin did it to Yu and Guo in 658 and 655 BC. The bait was famous horses and a jade disk. Yu’s minister warned that when the lips are gone the teeth are cold. Yu lent the road and fell.
What is the lip-and-teeth warning in this story?
Gongzhi Qi told the duke of Yu that Guo was Yu’s outer screen. Lose Guo, and Yu would be next. The phrase ‘lips gone, teeth cold’ is his, in the Zuo zhuan for 655 BC. The duke trusted a shared ancestry and the gifts. Jin destroyed Guo, then turned on Yu as the army marched home.