The Chinese Understanding and Practices of War: Vision on and Preparation for Warfighting

War is an eternal subject of human being, as it is like air, food and shelter with which we live. In an incomplete statistical survey, the mankind has experienced 14,538 wars in the world since 3000 B.C., on average of 2.6 times a year. This is a sad figure but relevant to our human genetic inheritance through our long evolution from being meat-eating animal to civilized men and women. Our biological origin still shapes our current identity: we are jealously territorial, immensely thirst for power, and hopelessly in search of domination. War is simply a natural product of us indulging in fulfilling self-interests at the expenses of the others’. Classic realism has a sensible evaluation of our basic human nature as such, although liberalism tells us that we have learned from our past horrors of war, especially the two world wars. We have created norms, laws, moralities and institutions against war. Yet terrible killings continue to happen, in Ukraine and in the Gaza Strip,…… Look around the world today, we feel threatened, as the World War III seems to be just around the corner