Dear All,

This forum is a treasure trove of resource. Glad I found it. Anyway, I've recently started a blog analyzing the application of the 36 stratagems in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I'll also be looking at the application of "The Way of the General" by Zhuge Liang next week. There are also some posts of Financial Intelligence and Value Investing (Warren Buffett)

Do drop by if you are interested.

Wonder, Wealth & Wisdom

Are you looking more towards the application of 36 strategies and 3 kingdoms strategy on business (investment, marketing) ?

OR are you just studying the general military strategy?

Thanks for your blog. It's really interesting.

Just to add some comments to your "Stratagem: 無中生有 Weaving Reality from Illusion", it is a deceptive strategy used in military warfare basically by providing a false message/appearance/action to the enemy, thereby confusing or making the enemy 'feel relaxed and at peace'. Then, while dragging more time, you then exploit the fact that the enemy is confused/tricked/relaxed and then strike them at great speed, thus winning and overwelming them.

The crux of the stratagem lies in confusing the enemy and letting the enemy not able to 'catch'/guess what your real intention is.

In Romance of the 3 kingdoms, the "borrowing of arrows from Cao Cao" (with the boat creating an illusion of 'attempting' to attack Cao Cao) certainly tricked Cao Cao into firing thousands of arrows onto the boat, esp. when there were fogs. It's a classic case of such strategy by novelists, but in real 3 kingdoms history, this story had never existed.

Note that this strategy is also often used in business competition. For instance, company A will make an announcement that it is developing product A with a certain technology feature. When he makes such an announcement, other competitors will follow suit to 'believe' that is the 'trend' and will go on to develop same kind of products. However, in actual fact, company A is already developing another product B secretly. Company A thus tricked other competitors to spend money developing the same type of product A, whereas the real 'weapon' (product B ) is being developed secretly. When the market situation had gone in a wrong way, company A launched product B in a swift way to capture the market and make tonnes of money. This is known as "Weaving reality from Illusion".

Dear General Zhao Yun,

Thanks for your kind comments.

Yes, I realized that the incident wasn't recorded in the historical records but was added as an embelishment in the Romance novels. I'm just starting to look at the stratagems in the novel setting and studying it. I haven't really considered on its' application at present in marketing or business but I guess it's applicable here too!

Your explanation is very clear and interesting. Hmmm.. this stratagem appears to be a classic ruse of mis-direction often used by illusionists. Your comment is really good and I'm hoping you post this comment in my blog for my readers.

Do drop by once a week as I'll be posting on war strategy every Monday. Appreciate your comments since I'm just a beginner

That's our GZY =)

Greetings wonderwealthwisdom. Welcome to our community. I agree, your blog is quite good. =) And your financial advice and speaking is considerably useful for people. I am a man of similar visions. I'm going to pass this along to my numerous stumbleupon visitors with a good review Here's hoping to see you posting here more with us as well!

Dear Lu Su,

Thanks for your kind words Keeps me motivated to continue blogging.

With the current spiralling oil prices, financial intelligence is more important than ever. I'm staying in Malaysia and they just reduced the oil subsidy, so coping with inflation is tough.

Sure, I'll be dropping by here regularly to check out the numerous interesting topics about strategy and ancient Chinese history.