The characteristic of Su Zi’s The Art of War is relatively specific, namely, studying the art of war in terms of battles. He did not only study the art of war, but also focused on a more important issue. What is the issue? Facing the future monarch, and facing the future commander, he would talk about the art of war. For example, in Laying Plans, the first part of Sun Zi’s The Art of War, he demands that we should perceive five factors, and then he deals with what the five factors are. After explaining the five factors in detail, he particularly deals with the fourth factor, that is, the factor of a commander. He further stresses the five virtues a commander should possess. He mentions in Laying Plans of Sun Zi’s The Art of War the virtues of wisdom，sincerely，benevolence，courage and strictness. That is, a commander must possess these qualities if he wants to be qualified commander. After explaining the other four factors, he does not further deal with them, but particularly deals with the factor of commander in detail in order to differentiate it from the other four factors, which indicates he shows special preference or extraordinarily attaches the importance to it. So today Sun Zi’s The Art of War not only influences the military field, but also our social life, especially our economic society as well as the study of wisdom in administration. The reason why it relates to administration field is because Sun Zi’s The Art of War was written for commanders, and it mainly discusses the art of war, and how to be a qualified commander is interlinked with how to be a qualified manager. In the following I’ll mainly talk about the structure of Sun Zi’s The Art of War. There are 13 pieces of writing in this book, and it can be roughly classified as follows: the first three pieces, namely Laying Plans, Waging War, and Attacking by Stratagem, which can be viewed as its macro-strategy level. Then the next three pieces are Tactical Dispositions, Energy, Weak Point and Strong, which deals with specific military tactics. The first part is strategy, and the second part is tactics. Then seven to twelve parts focus on more specific issues. We can roughly know it from the titles of these parts: The Army on the March, Terrain and Fire Attack, whose content is relatively specific. Since our teaching time is limited, I often don’t talk about the three pieces of writing in detail, that is to say, I’ll skip the three pieces of writing in the class， Namely the third part of the book. the fourth part of this book is Using Spies, which in the integral structure of Sun Zi’s The Art of War is an independent part. Though this part consists of only one piece of wring, it is vitally important. The above is my introduction of the book, and then in the following, I’ll mainly talk about the strategy, tactics and using spies in the book. As to its content, it is written in sequence. According to its natural sequence, From one to three, four to six And then Using Spies, the final piece of writing. But our lecture is in accordance with another sequence, that is, I’ll first talk about the last chapter Using Spies. Someone may wonder about it as Using Spies is the last piece of wring in Sun Zi’s The Art of War. The reason is why I do this way, the following is my view. Though this is the last piece of writing, if we know a bit of the thought of Sun Zi’s The Art of War, we’ll find all the policies made on strategic level, and the specific formulation of tactics, must completely rely on reliable intelligence, which is premise of all the military activities. Today even in peacetime, we often heard the news that a consular agent was expelled from a country because of his espionage. That is to say that the two countries are officially becoming enemies. Long before or even decades of years before the outbreak of a war, the rivals have been collecting military intelligence by means of espionage. Finally the two countries become enemies, and even lead to a war. Consequently a country’s strategic decision and tactical principle is made on account of intelligence collecting without exception. Using Spies deals with intelligence collecting, which is actually a natural starting pint of all warfare. Such being the case, why in the shaped version of the book in our hand today Using Spies is positioned at the end of the book in the course of being handed down and complied by many people? As to this question, today I’ll propose my tentative opinion in order to help us understand the ancient compilers’ well-intention. The preface today is always at the beginning of a book. Before we read a book, we don’t know whether it is worth reading or not. Usually how do we do? First we read its preface in order to get general idea of the book. This is the stylistic rules we must abide by when we compile a book today, but ancient compilers didn’t abide by the rules like us today, for many books they compiled the important part, like preface was often poisoned at the end of books. Let me cite two examples. One is Zhuang Zi. It consists of 33 pieces of writing, and is divided into inner, outer and miscellaneous parts. The last chapter in the miscellaneous part is The World. Though it is positioned at the end of the revised version, in many great masters’ opinion, this piece of writing’s thought and the whole academic vision embodied by its thought are of great importance. It is just the door through which we enter the world of Zhuang Zi’s mental realm. Or it is a guide part. So, when we read the selected versions of Zhuang Zi we’ll find most of them must at least select eight pieces of wring, seven in inner part, and then add The World. But in the selected version today, The World is still positioned at the end of the book. As to understanding Zhuang Zi’s thought, we should first read The World, and then we can have a better starting point to enter Zhuang Zi’s mental realm. This is the first example The other example is the Historical Records. The end of the book is the Author’s Preface. In the preface, the author not only introduces his family and knowledge origin but also reflects his academic vision and ambition when he wrote the Historical Records Therefore today, when we read this book, we first begin from the last chapter the Author’s Preface, and after we grasp it, we can go further to appropriately understand the Historical Records. and its authors’ academic vision and ambition. That is the reason why we regard Using Spies as the starting point when we read Sun Zi’s The Art of War though it is positioned at the end of the book.
