The greatest military strategist in Chinese history?

rhino123 · Nov 23, 2009

pla101prc said:
you guys are all wrong about Lin Biao. sidewinder, your theory of Lin Biao chickening out is only there because he betrayed the CCP, who knows what the real reason was. as for injury of Shu Yu, that excuse would have suited Lin Biao a lot better, he was injured during Ping Xing Guan. Shu Yu was one of the best military leaders but he too recorded a loss at Jin men. so nobody is perfect.
and whoever that said Lin Biao always had the best equipment. yes that was the case when PLA battled for Dongbei, but immediately after the Japanese surrender when Chiang was hunting down the communists, Lin's soldiers in south manchuria were walking in snow with straw shoes. so dont jump to conclusions there and back up what you guys say with evidence.
rhino, true Mao never fired a shot in his life,but he did direct battles such as four crossings of Chi Shui.

What you say is true. I am not disputing how good a strategists he is. I am merely saying that he is a person that know how to recognise and make use of talents, which is the same as what medival emperors such as Liu Bang is doing.

Actually the greatest form of strategy was to use the correct person for the correct job. Mao of course came up with great military moves and styles, but without his generals and marshals to implement those moves and theories it would be useless.

Thus a great strategist is one that come up with a general direction of what his or her nation, army, company, etc is going forward to and recognise and use the correct people (tacticians) to implement his or her strategies.

pla101prc · Nov 23, 2009

rhino123 said:
What you say is true. I am not disputing how good a strategists he is. I am merely saying that he is a person that know how to recognise and make use of talents, which is the same as what medival emperors such as Liu Bang is doing.

Actually the greatest form of strategy was to use the correct person for the correct job. Mao of course came up with great military moves and styles, but without his generals and marshals to implement those moves and theories it would be useless.

Thus a great strategist is one that come up with a general direction of what his or her nation, army, company, etc is going forward to and recognise and use the correct people (tacticians) to implement his or her strategies.

that would make you a great political leader, but we are talkin about MILITARY strategist here. Liu Bang was great, but like i said, losing every battle to Xiang Yu does not make him the best militaty strategist there is. though he is not incompetent in this field either, that is shown in his performance of recapturing his home town. but in a warring period there simply too many talents out there. so what made him an emperor is his leadership ability, but when we are talkin about military he is nowhere near Mao.

ravenshield936 · Nov 23, 2009

my favs will be
yue fei
zhugeliang (his brilliance in many aspects. even though someone said he's more of an admin, zgl still deserves praises)
han xin

rhino123 · Nov 23, 2009

pla101prc said:
that would make you a great political leader, but we are talkin about MILITARY strategist here. Liu Bang was great, but like i said, losing every battle to Xiang Yu does not make him the best militaty strategist there is. though he is not incompetent in this field either, that is shown in his performance of recapturing his home town. but in a warring period there simply too many talents out there. so what made him an emperor is his leadership ability, but when we are talkin about military he is nowhere near Mao.

Well... I think you got me there. I agreed with u in all aspect...

vesicles · Nov 23, 2009

pla101prc said:
that would make you a great political leader, but we are talkin about MILITARY strategist here. Liu Bang was great, but like i said, losing every battle to Xiang Yu does not make him the best militaty strategist there is. though he is not incompetent in this field either, that is shown in his performance of recapturing his home town. but in a warring period there simply too many talents out there. so what made him an emperor is his leadership ability, but when we are talkin about military he is nowhere near Mao.

I think Liu Bang was more like a politician, like his distant grand.....son, Liu Bei. Militarily, they depended too much on their generals/advisers. Liu Bang had Han xin and Liu Bei had whoever (Let's not say Zhu Geliang here). The thing is they lack strategic vision. Both Lius were simply wandering around and being chased by whoever before their savior appeared.

Other first emperors, such as Li Shimin (Tang dynasty) and Zhu Yuanzhang (ming dynasty) had great strategic vision and led armies into battles. BTW, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Li Shimin yet. One of the greatest emperors in China, Li had it all, IMHO. He led armies into battles and practically destroyed Sui dynasty and unified China on his own. You don't hear Li had a lot of helpers, although we hear about all the great warriors during that time, like Li Jing, Qin Qiong (spelling?) and Ho Junji, etc. Li definitely did not reply on those generals like Liu Bang depended on Han Xin. BTW, Li was only one of the two emperors who actually defeated the Huns. And also equally important, after his mighty military conquest, Li decided that the military was not the key to the development of the Tang dynasty, economy was. So instead of maintaining a huge army like any other great conquerors would do, he turned things around and focused on economic development and made Tang the superpower in the world. I think Li Shimin deserves our recognition!

And talking about gaps, I think Zhu Yuanzhang had the biggest gap between his troops and his enemy. We all know how mighty the Mongolians were at the time. In the Yuan dynasty, the Mongolians were so worried about Chinese rebellion, they only allowed 1 kitchen knife per 10 families (I think there's also something on the amount of total metal allowed in each family, even including nails and plows and stuff). And no more than 3 people were ever allowed to be seen together. And under this kind of strenuous situation, Zhu was able to start a successful rebellion and kick out the Mongolians. And by the way, Mongolians were definitely not someone you could push around easily.

Talking about the great Tang warriors, can any of you count all 13/14 of them in order? I can count about 11 of them. I'm always confused about #9, #10 and #11...

sidewinder01 · Nov 23, 2009

pla101prc said:
you guys are all wrong about Lin Biao. sidewinder, your theory of Lin Biao chickening out is only there because he betrayed the CCP, who knows what the real reason was. as for injury of Shu Yu, that excuse would have suited Lin Biao a lot better, he was injured during Ping Xing Guan. Shu Yu was one of the best military leaders but he too recorded a loss at Jin men. so nobody is perfect.
and whoever that said Lin Biao always had the best equipment. yes that was the case when PLA battled for Dongbei, but immediately after the Japanese surrender when Chiang was hunting down the communists, Lin's soldiers in south manchuria were walking in snow with straw shoes. so dont jump to conclusions there and back up what you guys say with evidence.
rhino, true Mao never fired a shot in his life,but he did direct battles such as four crossings of Chi Shui.

Yes, the history details about Liu Biao are now being blackened due to his action at the end of the Cultural Revolution. However, you cannot argue about his action during some of the battles during the DongBei Campign. He did not order his troop to beseige JinZhou even though chairman Mao sent several very clear orders about doing so, and he almost attacked the wrong target Chang Chun which seemed promising but was secrectly stronger than JinZhun! If he were to attack Changchun instead, even if he were to win the battle, hundreds of thousands of KMT forces could possibly escape DongBei and possibly affect the outcome of the whole war...

While Su Yu on the other hand, never made any mistakes like that. Also, his army was equipped like bandits compare to Liu's during the beginning but he was also able accomplish as much as liu if not more. Liu's fourth field men army also had by far the most men on the PLA side with over 1 million men... The KMT forces that Liu Biao was faced against in Dong Bei was also not as elite as the forces Su Yu faced in HuaiHai Campign as the armies in Huai Hai were mostly Chiang's "Di Xi" forces equipped with the best.

Mao also picked Su Yu over Lin Biao for the Korean War which really showed the difference....

As for Peng, I also respected over anyone sometimes. He is like Zhang Fei among the PLA generials. He would not be scared to step into any battles under any condition. He have always fought the most harsh battles and endured the most crucible among the generials in PLA according to himself during a 1950s meeting. THe only problem with his war is that men loss is quite significant.

sidewinder01 · Nov 23, 2009

vesicles said:
I think Liu Bang was more like a politician, like his distant grand.....son, Liu Bei. Militarily, they depended too much on their generals/advisers. Liu Bang had Han xin and Liu Bei had whoever (Let's not say Zhu Geliang here). The thing is they lack strategic vision. Both Lius were simply wandering around and being chased by whoever before their savior appeared.

Other first emperors, such as Li Shimin (Tang dynasty) and Zhu Yuanzhang (ming dynasty) had great strategic vision and led armies into battles. BTW, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Li Shimin yet. One of the greatest emperors in China, Li had it all, IMHO. He led armies into battles and practically destroyed Sui dynasty and unified China on his own. You don't hear Li had a lot of helpers, although we hear about all the great warriors during that time, like Li Jing, Qin Qiong (spelling?) and Ho Junji, etc. Li definitely did not reply on those generals like Liu Bang depended on Han Xin. BTW, Li was only one of the two emperors who actually defeated the Huns. And also equally important, after his mighty military conquest, Li decided that the military was not the key to the development of the Tang dynasty, economy was. So instead of maintaining a huge army like any other great conquerors would do, he turned things around and focused on economic development and made Tang the superpower in the world. I think Li Shimin deserves our recognition!

And talking about gaps, I think Zhu Yuanzhang had the biggest gap between his troops and his enemy. We all know how mighty the Mongolians were at the time. In the Yuan dynasty, the Mongolians were so worried about Chinese rebellion, they only allowed 1 kitchen knife per 10 families (I think there's also something on the amount of total metal allowed in each family, even including nails and plows and stuff). And no more than 3 people were ever allowed to be seen together. And under this kind of strenuous situation, Zhu was able to start a successful rebellion and kick out the Mongolians. And by the way, Mongolians were definitely not someone you could push around easily.

Talking about the great Tang warriors, can any of you count all 13/14 of them in order? I can count about 11 of them. I'm always confused about #9, #10 and #11...

I totally agree with you, I think China was at it's prime during the early Eras of the Tang Dynasty in term of Military and ecnonmy. Li Shiming himself was a warriior of tremendous skill in actual battle and military strategy, he was known for great accuracy in archery and his double blade. However, I think the only problem was he didnt have to kill his brothers for power... he could captured them and imprison them for life instead of killing them....

As for the Mongos, the only problem was that they only know how to fight wars and not how to govern the land they conquered. They do not allow Han to take government posts, they slaughter a city if the city does not surrender to them, and they have a lot of other stupid rules like mentioned above, basically they only know how to make people afraid of them instead of obeying them honestly.. which is why Yu Dynasty was such a short dynasty compare to the other 4 around its era

vesicles · Nov 23, 2009

sidewinder01 said:
However, I think the only problem was he didnt have to kill his brothers for power... he could captured them and imprison them for life instead of killing them....

Well, it's customary for a guy who took the throne illegitimately to kill off the legit crown prince because he could always muster support to go against you later (after all, he's the legit one), no matter how much he swears to obey you when you have a big old sword on his neck. Another thing is as long as the crown prince is alive, other people could also use him to muster support even though they want the throne for themselves. So the easiest thing to do is to kill him off and solve the problem once and for all.

I think people tend to think of royal families as normal families, where everyone gather around the table and eat dinner every night. The truth is everyone had their own palace and they probably saw each other once a year. So to them, a sibling is no more than a stranger with the same last name. I can't remember starting with which dynasty, they began to take the princes away from their birth-mothers immediately after birth to weaken the bond between the mother and son. This was because too many old queens took control of the throne after the old emperor died and their young sons became the new emperor.

sidewinder01 said:
As for the Mongos, the only problem was that they only know how to fight wars and not how to govern the land they conquered. They do not allow Han to take government posts, they slaughter a city if the city does not surrender to them, and they have a lot of other stupid rules like mentioned above, basically they only know how to make people afraid of them instead of obeying them honestly.. which is why Yu Dynasty was such a short dynasty compare to the other 4 around its era

The legend says that's how the moon cake was invented. Since the Chinese were not allowed to gather, Zhu came up with the plan to hide the messages inside of moon cakes to tell people the time and location of the rebellion. the message was "Let's kill Da zi (the not-so-flattering nick name for Mongolians at the time) on August 15th!"

It's interesting that the Qing dynasty learned the lessons of Mongolians too well and decided to learn from the Chinese. Eventually, the Machurians can't even speak their own language and all became Chinese.

vesicles · Nov 23, 2009

sidewinder01 said:
As for Peng, I also respected over anyone sometimes. He is like Zhang Fei among the PLA generials. He would not be scared to step into any battles under any condition. He have always fought the most harsh battles and endured the most crucible among the generials in PLA according to himself during a 1950s meeting. THe only problem with his war is that men loss is quite significant.

I thought Peng was much more than Zhang Fei. To me, he's more like a combination of Zhang Fei and Yue Fei in one amazing bundle! That famous poem by Mao sums it all up. I won't recite the poem here in English since no translation can actually demonstrate the mighty image of Peng that the poem is conveying. Mao, who thinks of himself as highly sophisticated, would definitely NOT admire someone like a relatively brainless Zhang Fei...

山高路遠溝深
大軍縱橫馳奔
誰敢橫刀立馬
唯我彭大將軍

My blood is boiling!!

vesicles · Nov 23, 2009

ff Let me try to give you guys the great warriors of the Tang dynasty:
#1 Li Yuanba, #2 Yuwen Chengdu, #3 Pei Yuanqing, #4 Xiong Kuohai, #5 Wu Yuzhao, #6 ?, #7 Luo cheng, #8 Yang Lin, #9 Ding Yanping, #10 Yang Fang ?, #11 ?, #12 Qin Yong, #13 Qin Qiong and Yuchi Gong. Help me fill out the ?s

The greatest military strategist in Chinese history?

rhino123

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pla101prc

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ravenshield936

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vesicles

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