Unnamed Chinese “friends” have presented two of the Shan State Army (SSA) south’s most well-known leaders with New Year gifts of China’s most celebrated military treatise “The Art of War” by Sun Zi (mostly spelled Sun Tzu), according to SSA sources.
Lt-Gen Yawdserk, Chairman of the SSA’s political arm, Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), and Lt-Col Gawn Zeun, Commander of Military Region #1, which is Shan State East, both told SHAN, they had recently received hard over copies of both the text and commentaries on the subject, in Chinese
“The bad news is that I don’t read Chinese,” said Gawn Zeun, laughing. “The good news is that we can read them in Thai.”
According to him, the “Chinese friends” must have realized their Shan friends don’t read Chinese. “I think it’s only the Chinese way of reminding us that we need to study it (in whatever language we are proficient) and apply it in our struggle,” he said.
Yawdserk also showed SHAN two thick red volumes of Sun Tzu, during a recent visit to his office on the Thai-Burmese border.
The 13 chapters of Sun Tzu, who flourished in BC 551-467, were first translated from Thai into Shan in 1980 by Khuensai Jaiyen, SHAN editor. The second translation, which consulted several versions in English and Thai, was carried out between 2007-2008, and appeared in its monthly newsletter Independence, Issue # 233-# 246.
James Clavell, who edited the 1910 English translation by Lionel Giles, wrote: “If I were a commander in chief or president or prime minister I would go further: I would have written into law that all officers, particularly all generals, take a yearly oral and written examination on these thirteen chapters, the passing mark being 95 percent—any general failing to achieve a pass to be automatically and summarily dismissed without appeal, and all other officers to have automatic demotion.”
Sun Tzu himself had said: “The general who hearkens to my counsel and acts upon it will conquer—let such a one be retained in command! The general who hearkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it will suffer defeat—let such a one be dismissed!”
The warrior philosopher however was not a war monger, as one of his best known dictums indicate: The highest form of generalship is to win without fighting.
The SSA South signed a ceasefire pact with Naypyitaw on 2 December. The books were said to have arrived a few weeks afterward.
