WEI QI VS CHESS

CAN INDIA BEAT CHINA AT ITS OWN GAME?

Aditya Kaul

DNA, November 27, 2011

The Chinese play a game called Wei qi. It is like chess, but with a different philosophy. While a chess player seeks absolute victory by checkmating the opponent’s king, a Wei qi player seeks a strategic edge by encircling the opponent’s pieces. In chess, you have the advantage of knowing the placement of all your opponent’s pieces. But, in Wei qi, strategy unfolds gradually. Pieces are deployed as the game progresses.

In making the comparison between the two strategy games in his recent work, On China, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger traces the origins of China’s “distinctive military theory” to a period of upheaval, when ruthless struggles between rival kingdoms decimated China’s population.

Reacting to this slaughter, Chinese thinkers, he says, developed strategic thought that placed a premium on “victory through psychological advantage” and “preached the avoidance of direct conflict.” What makes China’s case more of an enigma is that it still invokes its millennia old strategic principles in its dealings with the modern world, and fiercely adheres to them.

Wei qi originated in China, and chess in India. As chants for an India-China ‘showdown’ grow louder, a senior Indian diplomat cautions that “nobody has a good understanding of China.”

Global power

The two sides were expected to sit across the table from Monday in New Delhi for the 15th time for Special Representatives’ talks on the border dispute, but there has been a last minute postponement and new dates are yet to be announced. Last year too, India had suspended the talks after China denied a visa to Northern Army Commander Lt Gen BS Jaswal because he came from the “sensitive” J&K, which China considers “disputed territory”, a pro-Pakistan shift from its earlier stand that J&K is an India-Pakistan bilateral dispute.

Outwardly, there appears little movement between Beijing and New Delhi. “China’s primary objective,” says former national security advisor, Brajesh Mishra, “is to have no rival in Asia. Otherwise, how can they claim to be a global power of the standing of the United States?”

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