A small Chinese business needed raw materials for its production, and therefore entered into negotiations with a Hong Kong trader.
The trader knew that the Chinese side had to rely on his raw materials as a matter of urgency, and wanted brazenly to reap the benefits of this fact. He demanded an outrageous price and, in addition, behaved arrogantly. Luckily for the Chinese side, the trader didn’t know that their supplies would last for only another two weeks. Without a supply of the raw materials, the Chinese business was facing a halt in production. Although the representative of the Chinese side used all his customary negotiating skills, the Hong Kong trader didn’t budge an inch from his hard line and was even aggressive. In the middle of this hopeless situation, the Chinese man suddenly thumped on the table and got up abruptly. Seething with rage, he said, “If this deal really doesn’t matter to you, then you can leave now. We have enough stock for a whole year’s production.
Furthermore, we plan to switch over to a different product in a year’s time. Then we’ll no longer have to rely on you anyway. Sir, it was my pleasure!” And, with these words, he showed the Hong Kong trader the door. The trader was totally flabbergasted. His hopes seemed to have been dashed. The threat of the total loss of any profit loomed.
After he had calmed down, he sat down again and now began to negotiate with the Chinese man in earnest. A mutually satisfactory transaction was agreed on by both sides.
A Chinese commentator concludes: The Chinese side found itself in an extremely vulnerable position here, the catastrophic extent of
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which was admittedly unknown to the Hong Kong trader. The Chinese man deceived him by virtue of the harsh words he used. He pretended to the Hong Kong trader that fullness dominated, where, in reality, almost total emptiness prevailed. In this way, he gave a real shock to his opponent, who of course didn’t want to leave empty-handed, and this caused him to get off his high horse. If the Chinese man had really come clean about the desperate state of his business, then the Hong Kong trader would only have exploited this all the more mercilessly (Yu 1994, pp. 272–3).
Stratagem 34:
The stratagem of the suffering flesh
The self-mutilation stratagem (inflict injury on oneself to win the enemy’s trust).
1. Sham-deserter stratagem;
2. victim-status stratagem; sympathy-vote stratagem;
3. self-castigation stratagem; appeasement stratagem;
Canossa*stratagem.
You play the “quarry” or the “victim,” knowing full
well that “quarries” and “victims” automatically attract sympathy.
By virtue of self-abasement, self-weakening, self-prejudice, and so on, the stratagem user arouses some emotions, especially trust. In business life, this stratagem can also be used as an exploitation stratagem, and in this respect is a hybrid.
Stratagem radius
Politics: One day after an attempt was apparently made on his life, the Taiwanese president, Chen Shuibian, who was running for a second term, was reelected on March 20, 2004, with an extremely narrow majority of 0.2% of the votes cast (a lead of 30,000 votes).
84 Stratagem Training
*Translators’ note: a reference to an Italian castle, where the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV, famously did penance in 1077 (Stratageme 2, pp. 692 ff).
The rival candidates of the Kuomintang (Chinese nationalist party) were allotted 49.9% of the vote. The attempted assassination caused an insignificant injury to Chen Shuibian, and was characterized by various inconsistencies. Inasmuch as events that seem strange to the Chinese are more or less automatically looked at from the point of view of stratagems, it was not surprising that, only six days later on the Chinese-speaking Internet, the search string “Chen Shuibian—
the stratagem of the suffering flesh” had over 1,000 matches. On the other hand, as far as we know, it did not occur to a single Western commentator to look from the stratagem standpoint at the assassination attempt, which presumably earned Chen Shuibian the deciding winning votes. On the contrary, Western mouthpieces reported mockingly on “ludicrous conspiracy theories” in Taiwan (NZZ, April 2, 2004, p. 7).
Insurance business: A Japanese insurance company hired a large number of widows and trained them as insurance agents. By virtue of their employment, the company made enormous profits. Above all, the widows induced many married women to persuade their husbands to take out life insurance. For the widows, who traveled from house to house, were able to draw on their own ill fate: “If my husband had taken out a life-insurance policy, I wouldn’t now have to live from hand to mouth as a hawker” (Yu 1994, pp. 286–7).
Sales: In China, sales are often advertised under signs such as
“Great clearing-out sale” or “Opportunity to bleed us dry,” which signal that great harm is being inflicted to the business. In this context, there’s at least a faint correlation between the Chinese business maxim “Smaller profit, greater turnover” (Bo li duo xiao) and stratagem 34.
Educational system: An institute of science and technology reported that it presented a “ring of shame” to every graduate. A former student of this institute received a commission for a bridge-construction project, and, as a result of insufficient planning on his part, the bridge collapsed not long after its inauguration. After that,
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the institute bought some of the steel with which the bridge had been built, and produced a collection of rings from it. The graduates of the institute were supposed to wear the “ring of shame” on their fingers, as a daily reminder of the bridge fiasco and as a warning to be vigilant with regard to their own work.
Stratagem prevention
Sensitized by this stratagem, you should be bold enough to be vigilant against people who pose as victims and quarries, and against your own Samaritan instinct towards such people, in order not to allow pseudovictims and pseudoquarries to twist you around their little fingers; because “‘victims’ can be crafty fellows, too” (NZZ, February 9, 1996, p. 66). While you unmask false victims, you can and should support genuine victims and quarries with all your heart.
Stratagem risk
This stratagem is regarded as risky (Yu 1993, p. 372), because it doesn’t work without some form of self-prejudice. For this reason you must keep a sense of proportion, and be very careful that any disadvantage is not irreversible.