When reading history, one often feels the profound weight of time. When Chairman Mao Zedong evaluated the classic figures of the Three Kingdoms period, his perspective transcended mere historical nostalgia. He approached these figures through the lens of modern political strategy, organizational management, and military tactics, extracting timeless wisdom from ancient conflicts.
Liu Bei: The Master of Talent and Unity
In Mao’s assessment, Liu Bei’s overall strategic vision and grand tactics were slightly inferior to those of Cao Cao. However, Liu Bei possessed two extraordinary strengths.
First, he was exceptionally skilled at utilizing talent. When expanding his territory from Hubei to Sichuan, Liu Bei successfully integrated “air-dropped” core figures like Zhuge Liang, Zhang Fei, and Zhao Yun with local administrators. Historical records show that out of 56 officials with formal biographies in the Records of the Three Kingdoms, 18 were local cadres from Yizhou (Sichuan), accounting for nearly a third. This high proportion of local integration was crucial for the Shu Han regime to establish a solid foothold.
Second, Liu Bei understood the power of unity. Mao famously described the relationship between Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang as “a fish taking to water.” In this metaphor, Liu Bei was the fish, and Zhuge Liang was the water. Mao used this to illustrate the core relationship between a leader and the masses: a leader who unites with the people will find countless “Zhuge Liangs” around them, while one who alienates the masses becomes an isolated tree without roots. This unity was so profound that before the Battle of Red Cliffs, hundreds of thousands of civilians voluntarily abandoned their homes to follow Liu Bei.
Liu Bei’s Fatal Flaws: Emotion Over Strategy
Despite his strengths, Mao pointed out critical weaknesses in Liu Bei’s leadership. His first major flaw was allowing emotion to override reason. Following the death of his sworn brother Guan Yu, Liu Bei launched a furious campaign against Eastern Wu. This impulsive decision disrupted his overall strategic posture.
Mao’s second critique focused on Liu Bei’s failure to distinguish between primary and secondary contradictions. The core strategy outlined in the Longzhong Plan was to ally with Sun Quan and resist Cao Cao. By attacking Wu for revenge, Liu Bei neglected his primary enemy, Cao Wei, allowing them to “sit on the mountain and watch two tigers fight” (sit back and watch the two weaker states destroy each other) – a catastrophic strategic miscalculation.
Military Critique: The Yiling Campaign
Mao also analyzed Liu Bei’s tactical failures, particularly in the Battle of Yiling. While some scholars blamed the defeat solely on Lu Xun’s fire attack, Mao argued that even if Liu Bei had built camps of stone and earth, his defeat was inevitable due to severe logistical shortages.
Mao proposed his own military strategy for the campaign: the Shu army should have engaged in mobile warfare rather than a protracted war of attrition, as Sun Wu warned in his book Art of War.
He suggested that the Shu forces should have left a contingent to pin down the main Wu army at Yiling while sending elite troops to launch a rapid offensive through the Lishui River basin in the south. This maneuver would have forced Lu Xun to divide his forces, allowing the Shu army to employ tactics of besieging one point to ambush reinforcements, thereby securing a decisive victory.
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