By Alexandre Ferreira Lopes

Doing business in the West is usually fairly straightforward compared to Chinese-style negotiating. The Chinese take a more indirect approach in business negotiations, Alexandre Ferreira Lopes, a Brazilian lawyer and guest lecturer in the Essential China Master Classes at Nyenrode’s Europe China Institute, claims. He gives an example: “During one of his missions Alexander the Great was confronted with the Gordian Knot. He was told that the one who could solve the problem to unravel the knot would be emperor of Asia. When he couldn’t solve the problem by wit alone, he simply used force and cut the knot with a sword stroke. In a case like this the Chinese would never use force. Rather, they would think of a cunning alternative.”

Classic wisdom

Alexandre Ferreira Lopes is an expert on the so-called 36 stratagems, an ancient Chinese set of precepts for crafty actions that can be used in business negotiations as well as in everyday life. Ferreira Lopes: “When I lived in China I realized that the Chinese, to some extent, live according to the classics. They use classic wisdom everyday. Even children, while playing, were ‘strategizing’ all the time. This means that one should learn about the 36 stratagems in order to succeed in business in China. I think it’s the best way to have a glimpse of how the Chinese tackle situations. It works well as a valuable key to grasp the Chinese spirit. Besides, the stratagems can be used as a creative tool, as shown in Kaihan Krippendorff’s ‘The Art of the Advantage: 36 Strategies to Seize the Competitive Edge’. This means that you don’t just use the 36 stratagems, you build on them in order to come up with fresh tactics of your own.”

“In the West we tend to concentrate on strategies”, Ferreira Lopes says. “Strategies are completely different from stratagems. More related to a long-term planning, strategies are devoid of the cunning and deceptive moves that characterize the stratagems.” An example: “There is a stratagem called ‘Seize the opportunity to lead a sheep away’. It says that you should be aware of any opportunity that comes across your path. Anything that happens during negotiations should be taken into account. The Chinese consider this constantly. No wonder that the Chinese character for crisis is made out of two other characters: one is danger, the other one is opportunity. So the Chinese know that crises bring opportunities.”

危机

The Chinese characters for crisis. The left part means danger, the right part means opportunity.

“Westerners can only regard the stratagems from an ethical point of view,” Ferreira Lopes continues. “The Chinese, meanwhile, see the stratagems as a morally neutral tool. When you come across a stratagem that reads ‘Kill with a borrowed knife’ you should search for the hidden meaning behind the metaphor. That is to say: use somebody else’s help!”

Ancient but up-to-date

“The Chinese art of stratagems is a two-millennium old doctrine of war that emphasizes deception to achieve victory”, Ferreira Lopes explains. “It started with the ‘Art of War’, a famous book attributed to Master Sun, who was a warlord himself during the Spring and Autumn Period. The 36 stratagems came centuries later. The stratagems are excellent unorthodox moves that brought the Chinese art of stratagems to a much higher level than Master Sun’s ‘Art of War’ – a sort of Web 2.0 in terms of stratagems. The 36 strategems are a compilation of the Chinese heritage of military tricks. While the ‘Art of war’ is about fundamental principles, the 36 stratagems are actions. As I said in the master class at Nyenrode, one should start studying the ‘Art of war’ in order to grasp the fundamental terms that are needed to understand the 36 stratagems.”

The catalogue of 36 stratagems was first published in the West in the 1990s by Swiss Professor Harro von Senger, author of the book ‘The 36 Stratagems for Business’ and a Sinologist at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. Ferreira Lopes is working on what seems to be the first Chinese to Portuguese translation of the stratagem book. “Even in China the 36 stratagems is a rediscovery,” Ferreira Lopes says. “Although they were passed on from generation to generation, you might say they were rediscovered in today’s structured form. This means that the subject of the stratagems is really up-to-date. They have grown in interest now that the world is more heavily involved with China. Given that we are doing more business with the Chinese we should study their stratagems. Nowadays only a few universities have conducted workshops on this topic. Nyenrode is one of those and I praise its initiative. It makes this business university quite unique.”

The stratagems in practice: some examples

Alexandre Ferreira Lopes gives a few examples of how the stratagems are used in practice.

Stratagem 27: Feign madness but keep your balance
Ferreira Lopes: “One of my clients is a wealthy Chinese entrepreneur in Brazil. His wife was leaving her big luxurious mansion on her way to the supermarket one day, when two bandits approached and grabbed her abruptly. Shouting at her, they ordered her not to do anything foolish because they were going to kidnap her. Because she was wearing simple clothing, she responded with an untroubled look, saying: ‘You fool, let me go, I’m just the housemaid!’ One bandit looked at the other and said: ‘I told you stupid, she could not be the boss wearing those slippers.’ They let her go. This unorthodox reaction caught the bandits off-guard.”

Stratagem 28: Lure your enemy onto the roof then take away the ladder
Ferreira Lopes: “I personally interpret this stratagem with China’s use of low-cost labor to attract huge foreign investments. You trap someone on the roof by first offering him an advantage. Lured by cheap labor, a considerable number of enterprises were ‘invited’ to invest in the Chinese market. Such favorable conditions were used as bait to place China at the centre of world trade. Now that China has achieved its goal, it can raise obstacles or enact policies playing on the ‘real’ advantage: that those enterprises have reached a point of no return.”

Alexandre Ferreira Lopes, Nyenrode Business University