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三十六计英文-Thirty-Six Stratagems 24. Borrow a route to conquer Guo 三十六计

三十六计英文

Thirty-Six Stratagems

 (三十六计法语-Les 36 stratagèmes)

25. Replace the beams and pillars with rotten timber
Replace the enemy's strength with weakness. Sun Tzu wrote, "You may advance and be absolutely irresistible, if you make for the enemy's weak points; you may retire and be safe from pursuit if your movements are more rapid than those of the enemy" (from Section Six, "Weak Points and Strong," Art of War).

One way of making for the enemy's weak points is to give the enemy weaknesses that he does not recognize. Infiltration of your own picked personnel to take key roles in the enemy's forces is one way of following this stratagem. But it's less costly and less risky to cause the opponent to switch out his own best people. As mentioned previously, the Nazis used false broadcast information and forged correspondence to make the paranoid Russian administration believe that Russia's best generals were traitors. Thus the Russian high command arrested and executed its best people and filled their slots with inexperienced commanders. In this way, the Russians replaced their own beams and pillars with rotten timber.

Another application is to confuse the opponent about how to prepare for you. "That general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack" (Ibid). In taekwon do, if the opponent has great kicks, the fighter must jam him up and force him to use his fists. Thus the primary weapons are the "rotten timbers" of the less adept punches instead of the beams and pillars of the strong legs. I once watched a fight where a young man famous for his incredible kicks faced a man who had prepared for him accordingly. None of us onlookers were prepared for the fine demonstration of boxing that our famous leg man gave us. He never kicked once, and he pummeled his opponent and was never touched either by kick or punch. I had been training with him every week for the previous three months, and he had never let on that he was taking boxing lessons on the side. Thus, he forced his opponent to hurriedly train in fighting a leg man, and then on the night of the fight, he switched to fists. His opponent's hand skills had lost their edge, and he lost decisively.

From Sun Tzu:
O divine art of subtlety and secrecy!
Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible;
and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.
(from Section Six, "Weak Points and Strong," Art of War).

孙子兵法 偷梁换柱

三十六计英文-Thirty-Six Stratagems 26. Point at the mulberry only to curse the locust 上屋抽梯 管理咨询 Herbert Zhang Zhi Yong 口才 

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