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The Chinese Machiavelli
Machiavelli drew on 2000 years of history to develop theories on how to make war, how to win battles, and how to gain power and keep it. Using Machiavelli as a springboard, Dennis and Ching Ping Bloodworth boldly and adroitly map out 3000 years of Chinese political-military history--from Confucius to Mao Zedong--using Machiavell's discourse of power politics. They reveal a pageantry of Chinese historical figures, from wise strategists, heroic generals, crafty statesmen, and ruthless emperors to brave knights-errant, and from stately Confucian philosophers to shrewd, cunning Legalist thinkers, without the usual Confucian restraint.
The Chinese Machiavelli intends to help Western readers, who may be puzzled by Chinese diplomatic and military strategy, understand the principles that have guided both past and present Chinese leaders. For instance, why have modern communist Chinese leaders often befriended right-wing European politicians who are out of office rather than left-wing leaders in power? Why did they entertain President Nixon while the United States was at war with North Vietnam? Within the framework of a chronological history concentrating on power politics and using the social and cultural scene as a backdrop, the Bloodworths use China's long history to find answers.
Peter Li's preface for this new edition explains the structure of the book and offers a penetrating analysis of the authors' style and method. Although The Chinese Machiavelli is authored for the general public rather than for the specialist, the latter will also benefit from reading this history. The authors describe the continuity of Chinese history and reveal how knowledge of China's past sheds light on the political behavior of China's rulers today.
The Chinese Machiavelli intends to help Western readers, who may be puzzled by Chinese diplomatic and military strategy, understand the principles that have guided both past and present Chinese leaders. For instance, why have modern communist Chinese leaders often befriended right-wing European politicians who are out of office rather than left-wing leaders in power? Why did they entertain President Nixon while the United States was at war with North Vietnam? Within the framework of a chronological history concentrating on power politics and using the social and cultural scene as a backdrop, the Bloodworths use China's long history to find answers.
Peter Li's preface for this new edition explains the structure of the book and offers a penetrating analysis of the authors' style and method. Although The Chinese Machiavelli is authored for the general public rather than for the specialist, the latter will also benefit from reading this history. The authors describe the continuity of Chinese history and reveal how knowledge of China's past sheds light on the political behavior of China's rulers today.
370 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
About the author
Dennis Bloodworth
14 books3 followersDennis Bloodworth was a veteran journalist and writer who wrote extensively on the political developments in Southeast Asia and China.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 9, 2020
This book was written in the late 70s, but I found an out-of-print copy from Amazon. Really enjoyed the journey through the different Chinese philosophy and thinking.
1. Some of the thinking we generally associate to the Western school, you can see strands of them in the Chinese thinking.
2. Recently, I have been approach things with duality in mind. When things work, when things don't. This is a 2000+ year-old idea.
3. Legalism has its roots from Confucianism and Taoism. How ironic. And then even today, the ideas have not truly gone away.
A very readable book for me to go through Chinese history, though I would have preferred if names were in pinyin. It is also useful to have it juxtaposed against modern Chinese practices (by modern, that's China in the 70s) and also set against events happening at the same time in the West.
1. Some of the thinking we generally associate to the Western school, you can see strands of them in the Chinese thinking.
2. Recently, I have been approach things with duality in mind. When things work, when things don't. This is a 2000+ year-old idea.
3. Legalism has its roots from Confucianism and Taoism. How ironic. And then even today, the ideas have not truly gone away.
A very readable book for me to go through Chinese history, though I would have preferred if names were in pinyin. It is also useful to have it juxtaposed against modern Chinese practices (by modern, that's China in the 70s) and also set against events happening at the same time in the West.
December 27, 2022
Ching Ping and Dennis Bloodworth’s ‘The Chinese Machiavelli’ is essentially a history of China, and particularly its political/strategic thought, and tying it to the 1970s circumstances in China which was current at the time the book was written. It encompasses the sages of warring states period prior to unification. Through the various dynasties of China and the periods of disunity. There are three main sections to the book ‘Thinking’, ‘Fighting’ and ‘Ruling’ but these are really just a cover for the narrative.
The central idea is to have a book like Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ which tells how to win wars and rule, but to do it from a Chinese perspective to show why modern China does the things it does, even when that seems odd to westerners. Machiavelli uses the past to illustrate his policies and proposals. Here that initially seems to be what is done too – taking Confucius, Menicus ad other great Chinese thinkers. But it quickly becomes potted narrative of Chinese history.
The narrative is interesting enough but might be better done as a normal history book, it is almost as if the conceit is simply there to avoid the need for sorting out for the reader what is definitely fact, and what bits might have become fictionalised (did restaurants in the Sung Dynasty really sell cooked human? (p226)). Afterall for the purposes of this book if it is the fictionalised that is providing the lens through current policy makers act then it is important. For example, showing China’s emphasis on what they consider morally just (from the eye of the beholder) rather than what is rigidly legal explaining claims on the South China Sea (p84). But this then might have been better done just drawing the lessons and examples rather than providing the whole sweep of history.
There were shallow comparisons made to western history that I could have done without. For example, disparaging comparisons between China and Western dark ages post Han/Roman empires (p140). Oddly comparing the remaining parts of China with western Europe rather than Byzantium which would be the more obvious comparison – and then conceding later that the Huns overran N China (p196) destroying much of Chinese culture in the North – exactly the same as happened in the Western Roman Empire. But this is not a major part of the book and can be safely ignored.
I found the most interesting parts of this book to be about Ancient China’s thinkers and strategists, but there are probably books that do this better. The elements on the ‘current’ China of the 1970s are now hopelessly out of date – this book would have aged much better if it had taken Mao as a thinker to be put into the same perspective as the sages of old, rather than looking at how the sages of old affect Mao and his contemporaries.
The central idea is to have a book like Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ which tells how to win wars and rule, but to do it from a Chinese perspective to show why modern China does the things it does, even when that seems odd to westerners. Machiavelli uses the past to illustrate his policies and proposals. Here that initially seems to be what is done too – taking Confucius, Menicus ad other great Chinese thinkers. But it quickly becomes potted narrative of Chinese history.
The narrative is interesting enough but might be better done as a normal history book, it is almost as if the conceit is simply there to avoid the need for sorting out for the reader what is definitely fact, and what bits might have become fictionalised (did restaurants in the Sung Dynasty really sell cooked human? (p226)). Afterall for the purposes of this book if it is the fictionalised that is providing the lens through current policy makers act then it is important. For example, showing China’s emphasis on what they consider morally just (from the eye of the beholder) rather than what is rigidly legal explaining claims on the South China Sea (p84). But this then might have been better done just drawing the lessons and examples rather than providing the whole sweep of history.
There were shallow comparisons made to western history that I could have done without. For example, disparaging comparisons between China and Western dark ages post Han/Roman empires (p140). Oddly comparing the remaining parts of China with western Europe rather than Byzantium which would be the more obvious comparison – and then conceding later that the Huns overran N China (p196) destroying much of Chinese culture in the North – exactly the same as happened in the Western Roman Empire. But this is not a major part of the book and can be safely ignored.
I found the most interesting parts of this book to be about Ancient China’s thinkers and strategists, but there are probably books that do this better. The elements on the ‘current’ China of the 1970s are now hopelessly out of date – this book would have aged much better if it had taken Mao as a thinker to be put into the same perspective as the sages of old, rather than looking at how the sages of old affect Mao and his contemporaries.
August 5, 2011
Very inspirational
April 18, 2023
There is some interesting stuff in here that I learned, for example: how daoism feeds into totalitarianism, how the Song dynasty give rise of neo-Confucianism as a reaction to Buddhism, the unbelievable brutality Empress Dowager Cixi.
That said, some of the writing was pretty rough. WAAAAAAAAAAAY too much gratuitous French, Latin, or overly pretentious English that seem to do nothing but distract from the content. Along the continuous need to compare EVERYTHING with the Western Antiquity, stretching the comparisons to the point that you just want to toss the book across the room. Any references to the Mao/Communist Party of China feel very steeped in it's time. It also just repeats the same phrases again "castrated clique", "straw dogs", seemingly every chapter.
Not awful, but I'm very glad to be finished and moving on to something else.
That said, some of the writing was pretty rough. WAAAAAAAAAAAY too much gratuitous French, Latin, or overly pretentious English that seem to do nothing but distract from the content. Along the continuous need to compare EVERYTHING with the Western Antiquity, stretching the comparisons to the point that you just want to toss the book across the room. Any references to the Mao/Communist Party of China feel very steeped in it's time. It also just repeats the same phrases again "castrated clique", "straw dogs", seemingly every chapter.
Not awful, but I'm very glad to be finished and moving on to something else.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews