36 Strategies Vernacular Full Translation

Chapter 29
If you are forced, you will fight back; if you move, you will lose your momentum.Tired his strength, weakened his fighting spirit, scattered and then captured.There is no bloodshed.Need, Fu, light.

If you hit the enemy too hard, you will be counterattacked.Letting the enemy flee will weaken the enemy's momentum.Follow closely, consume their physical strength, wear down their fighting spirit, and capture them when the enemy's forces are scattered, so that victory can be won without a bloody battle.According to the principle of needing hexagrams, the key to this strategy is to stop the attack and convince the enemy that there is still a glimmer of hope for escape.In short, by not pressing the enemy, and by making him believe it, a bright end to the war is won.

In the interpretation of playing hard to get, "capture" is the purpose of doing things, and "Zong" is the method.The two are a pair of contradictions.The ancients had a saying that "the poor should not pursue". In fact, it is not advocating not to pursue, but to pursue skillfully.If the method is wrong, it will not be worthwhile to force the "poor bandits" to jump over the wall and struggle to the death, causing their own troops to lose troops and land.

Therefore, playing hard to get is not real indulgence, but letting go temporarily.But in the final analysis, it is necessary to capture, and the "release" is for the purpose of complete surrender, but this "capture" cannot cost too high a price.This is a bit like the saying "let him go".How to do it with less cost is to find ways to make the enemy unable to resist, powerless to resist, or simply do not want to resist.There is nothing good about the enemy surrendering without resistance.This is the essence of "playing hard to get".

As for the enemy, it is ultimately necessary to defeat and eliminate it, but there are strategies for when to defeat and eliminate it, and how to defeat and eliminate it.The ancients also had the ancient saying that "attacking the heart is the most important thing". Wouldn't it be better to defeat the enemy without shed blood, pay no price or pay less price?This should be what people are after.

In short, the "Zong" of playing hard to get does not require people to let the enemy go, allowing them to make chaos and act recklessly, but to relax temporarily and give them a certain degree of lenient, lest the other party feel that there is no way out and take extreme methods. Follow closely.In this way, it will reduce the cost of winning for yourself.

To use this timing, keep the following three points in mind.

[-]. Grasp the thread in your hand firmly to prevent the plan of "playing hard to get" in vain.No matter how high the kite flies, no matter how far it is from us, as long as we hold it firmly with a long string in our hands, it will not escape our palm.The same should be done with the enemy, always follow the enemy's trail, and prevent him from running away while using tricks.

Second, we will capture the enemy when he is tired from running.Enemies who fall into our hands will flee desperately as long as they feel that there is even a slight chance of escape.Fleeing desperately in panic and fear is not only physically exhausting, but also mentally exhausting.If we give him the threat of death while giving him the illusion of escape, he will keep running desperately to avoid harm.And we only need to wait until he is tired from running, stops, and loses his basic ability to resist, and we can catch him easily.If he acts while he still has the ability to resist, he will definitely fight back desperately, and our losses are inevitable.So, avoid this.

[-]. Deliberately indulging the enemy to make him lose his vigilance.In the face of the enemy, we can deliberately back down and let his self-inflated, thinking that we are weak and unable to compete with them.When their minds relax and their vigilance is lost, it will provide us with a good opportunity to catch them.

In addition, we should take the following preventive countermeasures to deal with the enemy's hard-to-get tactics.

[-]. When defeated, never lose heart, try to turn disadvantage into advantage, and turn retreat into counterattack.Once the war is defeated, we must give up the idea of ​​passive escape, and instead take advantage of the enemy's indulgence to regroup as soon as possible, restore and strengthen our own strength.Then either choose a favorable terrain to counterattack the enemy, or set up an ambush to lure the enemy.In short, we must not let the enemy's attempt to capture and play hard to catch succeed.

[-]. Play by ear and get out of danger quickly and alertly.In a duel with the enemy, once you find that your side is already in a passive position and may be surrounded by the enemy, you should react in time and take the initiative to retreat.Taking advantage of the fact that the enemy has not yet formed a tight encirclement, we can still choose the direction and route to break out of the encirclement at will according to our own judgment, and escape successfully.At this time, the enemy is not yet mentally prepared, and will not react immediately to follow us.

[-]. To hide from the traces and get rid of the enemy.If you have been tracked by the enemy, you should make a quick decision.Dragging a big tail behind for a long time, it will soon be worn down.Therefore, once the direction of retreat is selected, it is necessary to act quickly, adopt the strategy of escaping the shell of the golden cicada or crossing the sea to confuse the enemy and escape the danger.

[-]. Keep a clear mind at all times and never relax your vigilance.The real intention of the enemy to temporarily indulge us is to disintegrate our fighting spirit, relax our thinking, and then take the opportunity to make a surprise attack.In order to avoid being attacked, no matter when and where, we must maintain a high degree of vigilance and strong fighting spirit.Because the enemy is temporarily relaxed and paralyzed, the consequences will be unimaginable.

Examples of Wisdom
Napoleon's Command

On the battlefield, wars where the less wins the more and the weak wins the strong happen from time to time.Napoleon once used the strategy of "playing hard to get" to disguise his true intention to attack, quickly occupy a favorable position when the enemy believed it was true and relaxed his vigilance, deployed his troops skillfully, and finally completed the Jedi counterattack.

In August 1805, Britain formed the third anti-French alliance with Russia, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, and the Kingdom of Sicily, and decided to defeat France with 8 coalition forces.

The Austro-Russian coalition first took military action.At that time, Napoleon gave up his original plan of crossing the sea to attack Britain, and turned to deploying troops to the front line of the Rhine River, pointing the finger at the Austrian army rushing into the upper reaches of the Danube River. In October, the French army won the first battle, the defenders of Ulm were forced to surrender, and the Austrian army lost about 10 troops.In the end, even the Russian army that had just arrived at the front line retreated back to camp with the defeated Austrian army in desperation.

In November, after the French army captured Odu Vienna, they continued to pursue the enemy northward.At the end of the month, Russian reinforcements arrived in Moravia.The strength of the Russian-Austrian coalition reached more than 11. The leaders of Russia and Austria visited the army in person, and the coalition camped in the Olmitz area, preparing for the battle.

At this time, there were only 4 French troops following the enemy, and according to intelligence, Karl Grand Justice led the main force of the Austrian army from the Italian battlefield to quickly support the coalition forces.The Prussian army also came from the northwest in an attempt to attack the French army from the rear.The situation is extremely unfavorable to the French army fighting alone.

After Napoleon obtained the information that the enemy's reinforcements had converged and occupied the position, he immediately decided to use the strategy of "playing hard to get" to deal with the coalition forces.He ordered the French army that arrived in the Brunn area to stop pursuing immediately and break through the enemy as soon as possible before the main force of the Austrian army joined forces.For this reason, he seized the time and quickly mobilized his troops. The front line quickly increased to 7.3 people, stationed in the hilly area east of Brunn.At the same time, in order to lure the enemy to take the initiative to attack and make a quick decision, Napoleon spread false news about the weakness of the French army and pretended to negotiate with the coalition forces, which caused the Russian-Austrian coalition forces to miscalculate the French army's combat attempt.

On November 11, the coalition forces marched east of Brunn in five routes according to the original plan, in an attempt to detour the French army from the south.In order to induce the coalition forces to speed up their attack, Napoleon deliberately ordered the forward troops to abandon the Pratzen Heights, which was extremely convenient for defense, and retreat back, so as to attack the coalition forces' rear flanks while the coalition forces were active. On December 27, after the Allied forces arrived in Austerlitz, they saw the French retreating from the Pratzen Heights. They really mistakenly thought that Napoleon was fleeing in fear of the battle, so they rushed to attack and fell into the trap designed by Napoleon.

In fact, the deployment of the coalition forces at that time was: use part of the force to contain the left wing of the French army, that is, the Pratzen Heights and the area to the north; Southeastern region of Brunn.And this fell right into Napoleon's hands.In response to this situation, Napoleon only sent about 1 troops to block the main force of the coalition forces, and concentrated more than 6 main forces in the center and left wing, quickly forming a local force advantage, and fully resisting the temporary deployment of the coalition forces.

At about 7 o'clock in the morning, the coalition forces launched a fierce offensive, and the French army resisted desperately.Although retreating slightly, the French finally succeeded in holding off the Allied attack. Just after 9 o'clock, the coalition's left wing attack began to be frustrated.Alexander suddenly bypassed the commander-in-chief Kutuzov and hurriedly transferred the troops guarding the Pratzen Heights to the left flank to strengthen their forces.Therefore, Napoleon seized the opportunity and commanded his troops to seize the high ground, and the situation of the battle changed accordingly.The coalition forces launched four consecutive assaults to recapture the Pratzen Heights, all of which were repelled by the French.Subsequently, the French army successfully completed the central breakthrough, cut the coalition forces in two, and then slammed from the Pratzen Heights to the rear of the main force of the coalition forces, forcing them to the lake and swamp.In the end, except for a very small part of the main force of the coalition forces who escaped to the direction of Brunn through the frontal breakout, most of them were trapped on the freshly frozen lake.At the same time, the left-wing French army also repelled the right-wing troops of the Allied forces after a tenacious fight and chased them to Austerlitz.

In this battle, the coalition forces lost a total of 2.6 people, of which 1.5 were captured.The leaders of Russia and Austria escaped by chance, but the commander Kutuzov was seriously injured.The French army suffered only 1 casualties.As soon as the battle was over, the Austrian emperor immediately asked the French army for peace and signed the "Peace of Pressburg" with France.The Russian army subsequently withdrew from the Austrian territory, and the third anti-French alliance was declared disintegrated.

It is not difficult to see that the reason why the French army was able to win was mainly because Napoleon commanded well, used the strategy of "playing hard to get" to disguise cleverly, act quickly, and made correct combat deployments, so that the coalition forces fell into their own trap, unable to move, and suffered heavy losses. .In the end, the French army defeated more with less and successfully counterattacked.

Illusion in negotiation
When using the timing of "playing hard to get", the purpose of "manipulating" the enemy is not to make the opponent stronger, but to consume his momentum and disintegrate his fighting spirit, so that he can successfully conquer the opponent in a peaceful situation.Therefore, there needs to be guarantees, a targeted strategy and a strong confidence to control the enemy.

A few years ago, a Chinese company had a negotiation with an American company.We hope to introduce the production technology of a biological product from this American company, but the purpose of the US negotiation is only to sell this product, and does not intend to transfer the production technology to my country.This is where the contradictions of the negotiations lie.

In order to win the negotiation, our representative learned through various market surveys that this biological product is basically monopolized by two large companies in the international market, one is a French company and the other is this American company.In recent years, the two companies have been fighting openly and secretly, and both hope to capture the huge potential market in China.

At the beginning of the negotiation, the representatives of the American businessmen were full of arrogance and tried their best to avoid the issue of technology transfer, but they talked about their plan to ask us to act as their import agent to distribute their products in China.Obviously, American businessmen do not want China to master their production technology, for fear that Chinese people will no longer buy their products in the future.In response to the idea of ​​the American business, our representative used the information of another French company to launch an offensive against the American business.

The Chinese representative first deliberately revealed some basic information about the French company, so that the American businessmen mistakenly believe that our company has an unusual relationship with the French side.Then he pretended that the French company was already in contact with us for negotiation and intended to transfer technology.The American business negotiators were shocked when they found out, and their attitude immediately changed 180 degrees. They quickly put aside the topic of product sales and talked about how their technology is superior to the French company.Then he made a solemn promise, expressing his willingness to transfer technology to us, and strongly implored us to choose them and give up the French side.The behavior of the United States was exactly what we wanted, and the two sides quickly signed a technology transfer agreement.

Our representatives created false appearances during the negotiations, but in fact they adopted the method of "playing hard to get" to make the US company change from active to passive in momentum, put down its airs, and in turn offered to transfer technology, thus achieving our negotiation goals."Playing hard to get" in commercial settings actually has more of a threatening flavor.If you want to grasp the key points and make big profits, it depends on who has more information, higher application skills, and more confidence.

Carnegie's "Zong" name "Qi" Lee
"Playing hard to get" is a strategy to catch big fish with a long line.Without a long-term strategy and good plan, without the absolute certainty and strength to capture the enemy, it is easy to fail.Only those with great wisdom and courage can use it flexibly and achieve success in the end.

In the 19s, the U.S. Congress passed a bill to build a continental railway across the United States from east to west, and handed over the project to the Union Pacific Company.

After Anzu Carnegie heard the news, he ran around immediately, hoping to get the right to build the railway sleeping car.During the running activities, he found that the most powerful competitor was the long-established and large-scale Bruman Company, whose sales network had spread all over the United States at that time.

Although Carnegie firmly believed that he could do his best to win the right to build the railway sleeping car, but he knew that through fierce competition with Bluman, the profits he obtained would be greatly reduced.Without competition, the right to undertake the construction is likely to be handed over to the other party.How can we obtain the right to undertake the construction without causing a sharp drop in profits?Carnegie was troubled by this.

(End of this chapter)