Mao's generals and weiqi

[tundra]

Someone at the go club claimed that Mao Zedong required his generals to study weiqi up to a high level. (He claimed it was something like 5 dan.)

I was quite skeptical, for various reasons:

• I have never seen such a claim on senseis library, the go discussion forums, or in any of the go books I have read.
• My impression was that in the early days following the revolution, Chinese communists had mixed feelings about the game (if they thought about it much at all). Again, just my impression, but it seemed to be viewed by some as a relic of the old regime, a pastime for indolent aristocrats while the peasants toiled in the fields.
• I just believe there are more pressing concerns for military commanders.

But googling anyways, this turned up: http://www.chinaculture.org/08olympics/2008-07/08/content_135819.htm

The game has had ups and downs in China, where Confucius looked on it as a waste of time, the late Chairman Mao Zedong required his generals to study it.

...and this, from the UK newspaper, The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/mar/04/2

2,000 years of role playing games

China
The board game Go, known in China as weiqi, is a game of territory and encirclement, and has long been linked with warfare. Some of the earliest military references appear during the Dong Han dynasty, from AD25 to AD220. They describe weiqi as a game of war, and some modern scholars infer that the Chinese might at that time have been using it to model military strategies. Mao Zedong reportedly insisted his generals study weiqi - and there are rumours that today senior members of the Chinese military must be proficient at the game to progress through the highest ranks, says Jason Scholz of Australia's defence science and technology organisation.

So, is there any truth to my friend's claim? Or is he, and The Guardian, spreading nonsense?

[jts]

• My impression was that in the early days following the revolution, Chinese communists had mixed feelings about the game (if they thought about it much at all). Again, just my impression, but it seemed to be viewed by some as a relic of the old regime, a pastime for indolent aristocrats while the peasants toiled in the fields.
• I just believe there are more pressing concerns for military commanders.

I can't speak to whether Mao actually required his generals to be 5-dan, but I can speak to two of your doubts:

(i) Quite a few of the PLA generals had fairly refined tastes. They'd get together after the war for poetry parties. Mao was apparently an amazing calligrapher. Go doesn't seem out of place.

(ii) Mao actually thought that war was exactly like weiqi: link

[illluck]

There is no way that Mao's generals were all proficient XD Chen Yi was known to be an avid player, but he is believed to be low dan at best (probably kyu) - I doubt most generals were even players.

[John Fairbairn]

In a 2005 interview, Major-General Lin Jianchao, then China's top soldier and a keen weiqi player (he was Deputy Chairman of the China Weiqi Association) said :

In the difficult circumstances during the fighting in the Jinggangshan mountains [where Communist forces were besieged in 1928], Chairman Mao Zedong and Commander-in-Chief Zhu De once played weiqi at the Octagonal Building [where Mao lived and worked], and even now the table they once used to play on is still there. Chairman Mao did not have a grade, but he was very knowledgeable about weiqi theory, and his numerous plans were formulated using weiqi terminology. In the Mao Zedong Xuanji (Selected Works of Mao Zedong) there are five or six places where weiqi is mentioned. For example, in the Strategic Problems of Fighting the Guerrilla War against the Japanese he said, “When the enemy and we each have imposed an encirclement on the other, in the main this resembles very well the way of playing weiqi. The strategy of battles and campaigns where the enemy opposes us and we oppose the enemy resembles capturing weiqi groups, and the enemy’s strongholds and our guerrilla bases resemble groups with eyes. The problem of ‘making’ these eyes expresses the strategic and practical importance of guerrilla warfare in the enemy’s rear to dispute his strongholds.”

I think we may infer that if Mao had gone beyond this (requiring generals to study go), General Lin would have mentioned it. Lin himself had experience of playing weiqi in battle, using the backs of maps for boards and pills for pieces.

There is also evidence the other way. The great advocate for go was Chen Yi, who was very close to Mao. Nevertheless, during the war he famously said, "If you do that sort of thing [play go] you cannot achieve revolution" and threw his go board into the Yangzi River.

Chen was essentially the father of Chinese professional go once peace was established. He was reputed to be about 6-dan amateur, but to what degree his opponents pandered to him is unclear.

[GregA]

A related book on the subject:

The Protracted Game: A Wei-Ch'i Interpretation of Maoist Revolutionary Strategy by Scott A. Boorman, Oxford University Press 1969

http://senseis.xmp.net/?TheProtractedGame

It's a pretty interesting read - if you are interested in go, revolutionary politics, and strategy, and don't mind the fact that it reads like a dry PhD dissertation...

The author is not so interested in actual direct influences of go in Mao's strategy, so there isn't anything to confirm or deny your question. It's more geared towards U.S. policy makers trying to make sense of Chinese strategic decision making, suggesting go as a useful framework due.

[BaghwanB]

A related book on the subject:

The Protracted Game: A Wei-Ch'i Interpretation of Maoist Revolutionary Strategy by Scott A. Boorman, Oxford University Press 1969

Having read this book myself and looking over the references on this thread (admittedly without doing any real research myself on the question/topic), I'd have to say that a lot of these generals probably were familiar enough with weiqi to talk about their military strategies with references to it, but couldn't really apply "Go principles" to their campaigns very often. It's one thing to say "We need eyes to make us live", but you don't gain military control of an area (or ensure the survival of your army) by having two separate protected spaces.

The CCP's struggle against both the Japanese and the Nationalists were combinations of delaying actions and pure guerrilla resistance (and all kinds of non-military action) with very little "stand up" fighting going on. Nothing was as static as a go board can get, so I think all of these comparisons have to be taken with a very large grain of salt.

Not to say that some familiarity (or even a high level of skill) with weiqi couldn't help you think more flexibly than "line 'em up and knock 'em down" in military manners, but as a 1-1 comparison, it think it falls pretty flat.

Bruce "Same birthday as Ferdinand Foch & Hindenburg & Ghandi" Young

[Peter Shotwell]

Hello,
Boorman's book attracted a lot of attention when it was published in 1969. However, back in the 80s, in my column "Talking Stones" in the old paper AGA Go Journal, I wrote a critique, pointing out, among other things, that the go diagrams he applied to the war situation were very deficient, and in some cases nonsensical, probably because he was not a very good player (he was only 19 when he wrote the book). Moreover, the Nationalist opponents would have also known about go.
When I was in Beijing as an AGA representative making the first personal contacts in 1985, I met with a group of Chinese pros who said that it was only a “pleasant myth” that Mao was thinking about go when forming his specific strategies. What he was actually doing was applying the principles of the 36 Strategies (go being only one example of their use), as passed on, often un-noticed, throughout Chinese history. This was through stories in books like "The Records of the Historian, "Water Margin" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," and, more to the point, in books written by the "Dark" Daoist warrior/philosophers, such as Sunzi ("The Art of War"). These were the underpinnings of every Chinese revolt throughout history. They were contained and passed on in folk sayings and popular theater, and in discussions of economic, political, and love strategies, etc. that continue today in hundreds of books and articles throughout Asia. For example, Tony Fang’s 1999 “Chinese Business Negotiating Style” showed how Chinese negotiators used these maxims unconsciously in the early days of trade discussions with the West.
I sent the column to Boorman and offered space in the journal for an interview and/or a rejoinder, but he never responded. All this is discussed in more detail in my book, "Go, More Than a Game," and in my Origins article in the Bob High Library (http://www.usgo.org/bobhighlibrary).
Because this subject keeps popping up every several years, if someone has copies of the old journal, I'd appreciate a copy and would like to post it for its specifics.
Thanks,
Peter Shotwell
pshotwell at gmail.com

[kxedmab]

I don't think Mao have any interest in GO. He maybe only use some concepts derived from Go. These concepts are deeply penetrated into oriental culture, people may use them without realising their sources

[Tommie]

I could add nothing profound and factual as John or Peter
and can only speculate and utter opinions.

Sound scepticism in general helps against the proliferation of myths.
Understanding how journalism works, explains copying of myths.

For me, this falls into the same category as 'Lenin played Chess'.
Observers of Great leaders - and I mean it in the sense of very influential persons -
IMO often are prone to fall for the fallacy that a particular characteristic of that person is
the CAUSE of other achievements, not a independent, insignificant coincidence.

Pick your choice:
e.g. manager of the Year XY (years later in jail) has hobby NN (e.g. fishing).
"Fishing gives you rest & peace, hence you become 'successfull' by fishing",
while actually only simply using elbows and neglecting family ...

FOX-news thread on GD, started by some article of 'Pinkerton ? '
on the Go-Chess-Poker-USSR-USA NON-analogy was similar
(I didn't know FOX-news then and took it serious for some time ...)

[p2501]

Sorry to bump this old thread, but I just stumbled over this:

http://www.mechner.com/david/images/lim.gif

from http://www.mechner.com/david/personal/gocar.html

Admin: The image has been replaced with just the link. Although the image is relevant to the thread, it contains coarse language inappropriate to the forum. Proceed at your own discretion.

[SmoothOper]

The military commanders may have been 5dan after they killed and imprisoned some the higher ranking dans who would have inevitably been from the bourgeoisie. That being said the Chinese rule set does have some implications about the value of stones and territory vs. the Japanese rules.

[illluck]

Sorry to bump this old thread, but I just stumbled over this:

[image]

from http://www.mechner.com/david/personal/gocar.html

Not true as far as I know.

[tekesta]

AFAIK Chairman Mao, despite not being too avid a Go player himself, was aware of Go metaphors and their practical value in war. In East Asia Go metaphors as applied to military matters were highly valued by military commanders. For example, Tokugawa Ieyasu was known to be an avid Go player, just like many other members of the Japanese aristocracy and warrior class of the 16th and 17th centuries. It's more than likely that the game informed much of his military strategy.

[GoRo]

...
(ii) Mao actually thought that war was exactly like weiqi: link

Thank you. There are so many subtle references to GO, amazing!
Look at this list:

GO down (into, on, around, to, wrong, out, beyond, south, over)
GOing
GOvernment
viGOrous
aGO
neGOtiation
cateGOry
antaGOnism
GObble
MonGOlia
GOal
GOes
thoroughGOing
GOod
GOods
GOt

Cheers,
Rainer
(GoChild GoRo with 1658856 points)

[Koroviev]

Sorry to bump this old thread, but I just stumbled over this:

http://www.mechner.com/david/images/lim.gif

from http://www.mechner.com/david/personal/gocar.html

Admin: The image has been replaced with just the link. Although the image is relevant to the thread, it contains coarse language inappropriate to the forum. Proceed at your own discretion.

Ha, the French version of the offending phrase is "ton amis fait l'amour avec ta copine." Somewhat more mellifluous than the English!

P.S. It's 'discretion.'

Admin: Thanks. Changed