31th Stratagem of 36：The Strategy of Beautiful Woman
美人计 / měi rén jì /
31st stratagems of 36
The Strategy of Beautiful Woman
Action explaining the stratagem
Use a distraction to move attention from something important so that your adversary starts making mistakes. As an alternative, offer a distraction to make your opponent too engaged to care about a confrontation with you.
Historical note
This is the first time we see a stratagem that is not comprised of an ancient proverb. The name of the stratagem 美人计 / měi rén jì / simply means The Strategy of Beautiful Person (woman). The commentary to the original treatise reads:
When the enemy is strong attack his general, when the enemy is smart attack his emotions; defeat the enemy (through his weakness) and protect yourself.
Discussion
The treatise used ‘beautiful woman’ as an actual object of seduction against the command of the military opponent. In a broader sense, anything can be a ‘beautiful woman’, if it serves the purpose of drawing attention away from what really matters or from an encounter you wish to avoid.
Application
Powerful men sometimes become helpless against an unexpected weapon in the form of a beautiful woman. A famous Biblical story describes how Judith, a Jewish widow, saved her city, Bethulia, from inevitable slaughter by Assyrian forces, by entering the Assyrian camp, seducing and then beheading the Assyrian general Holofernes. A resolute woman became the most murderous weapon of all.
In business, instead of fighting a superior competitor in a hopeless predicament, one can choose to cooperate by offering bait; this can be anything that one’s opponent can truly appreciate. This may be the case for a local brand facing competition from a multinational company. A smaller but more down-to-earth business may decide to offer market expertise to a competitor in return for protection of its business interest.
In negotiations, one common way of deploying the stratagem would be creating excitement over some imaginary project – or putting an idea in your opponent’s head in order to buy yourself some time to deal with a problem that has not yet become public knowledge.
Note: you have just read one of the episodes from a series of articles on the 36 Chinese stratagems of deception. For more details on the original treatise of the 36 Stratagems please refer to the very first episode of this series.
Special thanks to the collaborator and proofreader Luke Sheehan