[The Library: Information Warfare] Five Baits of the Chinese Empire

The Five Baits of the Chinese Empire

China has been at the forefront of espionage and deception not for decades, but for millennia. 

The only nation whose origin still is unknown or not agreed upon by historians are the true masters at the game of deception. Even the cultural gamified version of warfare is different in China, and leans far more toward deception than outright warfare: the West tends to use chess as gamified warfare, while China has the much more complex WeiQi (围棋）,commonly known by its Japanese name Go. Chess is "simple" enough for a computer to consistently calculate every possible move in any given point in a game. The possible moves in Go, however, outnumber all of the atoms in the known universe. Literally.

Many of you have likely already guessed I am following Henry Kissinger's On China. I'm currently re-reading it, but have reached a point in the book that I believe warrants a blog post. The book, written by the controversial former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, can and should be viewed as one of the forefront literature on Chinese history and culture. 

I've reached the point in the book where Kissinger describes China's Five Baits. I think this point of the book is important because it illustrates one of China's historical soft power methods to deceive the enemy. I'll give a brief overview of the historical context behind the Five Baits and then explain why it's important many millennia later.

From On China: How China Won, Even When They Lost 

In Kissinger's On China, China is in a tough spot in history. They had lived in years of relative fortune, even through the multitude of infighting and domestic strife. When reached by the foreign "barbarians", they made very little attempt to establish a diplomatic relationship. They allowed no embassies, except to the Russians, who threatened to invade China, and had no ambassadors go abroad. They only allowed trade in Canton, now known as Guangzhou (广州） and didn't allow foreigners to visit the emperor for a long time.

The Chinese had, since their founding shrouded in civil war and mystery, adopted an extremely pretentious attitude towards anything not China. Even China's name, ZhongGuo (中国) or the Middle Kingdom, implied they were at the center of the universe. Westerners were viewed as barbarian savages, not even worth enlightening to the great Chinese way. When the Chinese were forced into globalizing by the British, French, Americans, and Russians, they enacted the Five Baits policy. 

The Five Baits were five ways that China used deception to trick foreigners and invaders to essentially leave without any real reward. During the Opium Wars, the Chinese essentially showered the British with gifts to convince them to leave without too many concessions, an odd strategy... besides the fact that it worked. The British, while gaining a diplomatic foothold in China, a large monetary sum, and an equal bargaining ground with Chinese ambassadors. 

While this seems like a military and diplomatic victory, Britain was in position to march on Beijing with very little opposition. China was decades, maybe centuries, behind technologically, still fighting mostly from horseback with bows and arrows, the occasional artillery piece given to them by the British, but not much else. They had the home team advantage, and likely more in terms of numbers, but besides those two small points, Britain could have easily marched to Beijing and taken the throne right from under the Son of Heaven.

The Five Baits

From Thomas Breslin's book  Beyond Pain: The Role of Pleasure and Culture in the Making of Foreign Affairs, the Five Baits are as follows:"elaborate clothes and carriages to corrupt their eyes; fine food to  corrupt their mouths; music and effeminate women to corrupt their ears;  lofty buildings, granaries, and slaves to corrupt their stomachs (i.e.,  slow them down); and royal banquets to corrupt their minds". 

If China had anything throughout history, it was riches. China, because of their ability to make nationalistic economic policy because of their isolationist foreign policy, was constantly rich. They had a burgeoning agricultural and upper class, and the emperor enjoyed riches that rival the billionaires of even today. China at one point was responsible for a third of the global GDP. This meant that they could quite literally buy off invaders. The Mongols and others were faced with owning an entire country, one of the richest countries on the planet at the time. Somehow, though, the Mongols didn't rule China for long, besides the Manchu emperors, who reigned for a comparatively short time. The British, as mentioned before, stood to entirely dominate the continent-sized agricultural haven, but somehow left with $6M dollars and a couple of trading ports.

This was an extremely expensive policy, and required a complete monopoly over trade and all of the seductive goods used to keep the Han line in power. This could be one of the baselines for China's insistence on Communism, or at least their insistence on government monopoly over the means of production. Many famous Chinese politicians insisted more on the Divide and Conquer policy (to be discussed in later posts) than the Five Baits policy purely because of the expense involved.

Many times, the Five Baits policy came after a successful invasion. China essentially paid off enemy invaders, convincing them that China was a better ruler of China than they were. It seems simplistic, but judging by how long the ancient society has been around, it has worked remarkably well. 

Why the Five Baits Matter

China still has a pretty strong hold on their economy. They can, and do, still bribe their way out of diplomatic losses. It's an important policy to be aware of, as old tricks die hard. China relies very heavily on their rich culture and history, so it's very likely that top Chinese policymakers have this policy in mind. 

China's ability to win even when they lose is remarkable. The Five Baits were important in Chinese history, and I would expect to see them be extremely important in the near future.