The American Strategic Studies Institute published an essay by Dr. David Lai regarding why Chinese politics are different:
Learning from the Stones: A Go Approach to Mastering China's Strategic Concept, Shi

According Dr. Lai, the word Shi is key to understand Chinese strategy.
(Unfortunately, I don't speak any Chinese language and he doesn't provide the original writing for that word)

Dr. Lai begins comparing Chess and Go as two different strategic approaches.
Later on he comments extensively a Go game, and the strategies and tactics used in it are examples of the relationships between the Mainland China and Taiwan or Northern Korea, the Chinese investments in Africa, China's policies on Human rights, and many other subjects.

This 39 pages long pdf is freely downloadable from this site:
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=378

Why Go and not Mah-Jongg?

The first reason is that this is a go forum, and not a Mah-Jongg forum, but the second reason is that the paper, while meant as a way for American military thinkers to better understand Chinese military thinking, it also can be seen by the go player as a description of the Chinese way of thinking about go.

One of the first things that struck me in the article, was that a comparison was made of American military thinking to various sports, in particular football, chess, poker and boxing (p. 2). Recently I was thinking about which sport most resembled go, and boxing was the one that came to my mind. (Well,perhaps boxing in slow motion). But, why boxing? I don't really know all that much about it, but it seems to me like a sport in which you try to hurt your opponent before he hurts you, and the strategy involves finding and exploiting the opponent's weaknesses. My suspicion after reading part of the paper is that this is a particularly western way of looking at go. I do know that good boxers don't just pound away at their opponents, but that is a big part of it, and I am pretty sure that my thinking about go is likewise rather primitive.

I do realize that I am screwing with the metaphor, but the paper does show that the Chinese way of thinking about conflicts is different than the traditional American approach. There is less emphasis on overpowering the opponent, and more on influencing the development and character of the conflict itself. It also seems at least plausible that go, which was developed in China, reflects this way of thinking in a similar way to how American Football might reflect an American view of conflicts. If this is so, then it would also be plausible that Chinese theories of strategy would be more applicable to go than American ones.

Side note: Funny how someone writes a serious paper for military strategists and doesn't notice how silly looks.

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Patience, grasshopper.

First off, huge disclaimer: I know more about political theory and international relations than about go, so paradoxically on a go forum, I'll try to keep the go to a minimum.

I'd agree with Shinkenjoe, the choice of go seems a bit arbitrary. Applying go concepts to international politics might be a great idea (a different approach to traditional "realist" game theory which may well help understand matters of space, sequence and timing better, I'm a bit curious about how aji as a concept would fare, for example), but it still seems a bit arbitrary. The comparison with the football- and poker-loving US, especially, seems a bit too hasty and resonates way too much with a few well-know clichés that are almost inevitable when talking about Sun Tzu ("oriental wisdom", "elaborate martial arts" and all that jazz).

As speculation ("what can go bring to international relations?"), I think it's a fantastic endeavour, if it's undertaken seriously by someone with a solid education in both go and IR.
As an explanation of Chinese foreign policy, I think it'd need a strong biographical or sociological grounding ("Are go concepts used in practice? Do they serve as explicit references? Where and how are decision-makers familiarised with go?") with a strong theoretical framework (Actor-Network Theory would perhaps fit the bill, here, possibly). Otherwise, it runs the risk of perpetuating a "men are from Mars, women are from Venus and the Chinese are from some kind of ancient mystical land" kind of logic which doesn't really help and is theoretically flimsy.

Interesting stuff with an original presentation, though, which is something I can get behind. Thanks for sharing!

I don't see what's arbitrary about choosing go as a metaphor. Go exemplifies Chinese strategic thought, and the assumption is that it is not unreasonable to assume that go strategy reflects Chinese military strategy. This association is particularly apparent when we see that the reverse is true: Sun Tzu's military strategies have been applied to go for centuries.

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Patience, grasshopper.

According to Sensei's Library at
http://senseis.xmp.net/?GeoStrategicLessonsFromGo
the Chinese Character for "shi" ist
势

Unfortunately, too, I do not know Chinese, but have a rudimentary knowledge of Japanese Kanji only.
The Japanese equivalent for the Chinese character above seems to be
勢
(SEI, ikioi), with the meaning of "power", "force".

I found some ethymological informations about this Japanese Kanji that might be interesting for the deeper understanding of this term (but I do not have any idea whether this corresponds with the Chinese understanding of "shi").

The lower part of the Kanji is
力
with the meaning of "strength".

The upper part of the Kanji is
坴丸
with the meaning of "kneeling to plant a tree", with "tree" meaning "plant" in general here.
Planting requires great strength, thus the strength required for planting indicates consideralbe power.

If we return to the discussion about strategy, it should be evident that the real success from planting a tree does not derive overnight, but comes to life only in the long run.

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The really most difficult Go problem ever: https://igohatsuyoron120.de/index.htm
Igo Hatsuyōron #120 (really solved by KataGo)

daal: The main issue is that this essay isn't isolated in its attempts to define (and perhaps overstate, in my opinion) the difference between US "hard power" and Chinese "influence/soft power" through metaphors. It also resonates with a lot of the Cold War stuff on Soviet strategic thought, in that it emphasises difference and "otherness" by a somewhat forceful caricature of both parties.

Saying that cultural context matters is certainly sensible (to say the least) and I'm not saying go isn't a interesting place to look for some insights. It feels to me, however, that here in particular the metaphor is being used much too literally and the opposition between Clausewitz, Jomini and Sun Tzu largely mischaracterised. It leads to the interesting paradox of saying "In many ways, soccer is also a paradigm of Sun Tzu's way of war." (p.35). The essay overall denies western (or more specifically here US) strategic thought of much of its depth and finesse by crafting a strawman of a single-minded "overwhelming superiority" outlook which doesn't quite hold up (especially by obscuring the difference between tactics, strategy and grand strategy, or "forgetting" the influence of Machiavelli's finesse in the way we view power politcs).

The references to "oriental" philosophy and culture (which, granted, is much more appropriate here than in most other cases) are somewhat fashionable in much of the attempts at questioning the "mainstream" in a lot of social sciences, with very mixed results. By sticking too close to the game he describes and by stretching the metaphor too thin, I feel the essay is not doing justice to what is, in essence, an idea with fascinating potential.

Go is the key to understanding Eastern thought in much the same way that (American) football is the key to understanding Western.

Read what you will into that.

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Occupy Babel!

IMO, BJJ most resembles Go, while boxing resembles chess.

For the lazy: Brazilian jiu-jitsu

It was a new acronym to me.

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- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

There was a book, published in 1971, which attempted to draw paralells between Go and Maoist revolutionary strategy.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Protracted-Game-Interpretation-Revolutionary/dp/0195014936

I read it many years ago, at about the age of 15. I concluded that politics and war is beyond me; and the book was unlikely to make me stronger at Go. Therefore I wasn't really the right audience for the book.

I suspect that now, at the age of 41, I would reach exactly the same conclusion....

I do wonder about the inverse conclusion though: would becoming a strong go player improve one's skills as a general?

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Patience, grasshopper.

On a related note: One seriously good book about Go is "The 36 Stratagems Applied to Go",

http://www.amazon.com/dp/096418477X
(although I'm not sure I'd spend $178 on it - this was the first link I found.)

Matthew MacFadyen reviewed it at the time it was released:

http://www.britgo.org/files/bgj/bgj105.pdf

The review is on page 38 of the journal.

The book takes a classic Chinese essay which presents 36 strategies to apply in politics or war. Mao Xiachun then applies to some middle game Go positions.

The positions are seriously difficult. If they wree presented as problems, I doubt I would many right at all. The book shows the raw power of a top professional's reading. Unlike the first book I linked, this one has serious Go content and is a brilliant book.

I believe many books are ghost written. This (like Lee SeDol's recent book) appears to have been written by the author on the cover.