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Jane Cai

For millennia, the wisdom of Chinese strategist Sun Tzu has guided leaders.
His sayings, most famously collected in The Art of War, emphasise deception, careful preparation and understanding both your enemy and yourself.
“Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.”
“Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”
Today, a new master strategist has arisen, though his aphorisms emphasise careless blundering.
“If you do not know what you’re doing, neither does your enemy.”
“You cannot lose if you do not have a goal.”
This is the supposed advice of “Don Tzu”, a playful portmanteau of Donald Trump and the ancient sage. The character and the quotes jokingly attributed to him satirise the US president’s apparently unclear objectives in the conflict with Iran.
Another frequently cited pearl of wisdom is: “I may have a plan, or I may not.” Trump actually said this last month, while speaking to reporters about the possibility of attacking Iran’s Kharg Island, which is vital to the country’s oil exports.


In recent weeks, the meme has spread rapidly on Chinese and global social media platforms in the form of short videos and AI-generated images, often depicting Trump wearing traditional Chinese robes and sporting a lengthy philosopher’s beard.
Renmin University professor Jin Canrong, a prominent Chinese international relations scholar known for his hardline views, shared a picture of Don Tzu with his more than 400,000 followers on Baidu’s Baijia platform.
Beijing Daily, the Chinese capital’s official Communist Party newspaper, also got in on the trend. In a post on its X account on Thursday, it called Don Tzu’s “arbitrary battle stratagems” the new edition of Sun’s 36 Stratagems.
But most official media have skipped this chance to mock Trump, potentially to avoid bruising the president’s ego ahead of his visit to China next month.
However, some Chinese experts previously said that Trump’s seemingly contradictory and aggressive style could be seen as a deliberate strategy to keep rivals off-balance and win maximum concessions.
While it is not clear who invented Don Tzu, it follows several other sarcastic nicknames for Trump coined by Chinese internet users.
First, it was Chuan Jianguo, meaning “Trump the Nation-Builder”. The name combines one Chinese transliteration of Trump’s name with “Jianguo”, literally “build the country” – a common patriotic given name.
The idea is that Trump’s trade war and “America first” isolationism are inadvertently building China’s strength by weakening the US.
Online commenters joked that he was an “undercover” patriot for China. This was hugely popular during his first term.
That was followed by “King Don”, or “King of Knowing”, which mocked Trump’s frequent boast that nobody knows more about a given topic than him, portraying him as an overconfident know-it-all.
These memes often went viral on the Weibo social media site and Douyin short-video platform, blending sarcasm, nationalism and an appetite for the spectacle Trump brings to global politics.


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‘You cannot lose if you do not have a goal’: the viral wisdom of ‘Don Tzu’

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Ancient strategist Sun Tzu called for preparation and deep knowledge. His modern counterpart takes a different approach


Ancient strategist Sun Tzu called for preparation and deep knowledge. His modern counterpart takes a different approach.


‘You cannot lose if you do not have a goal’: the viral wisdom of ‘Don Tzu’

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Ancient strategist Sun Tzu called for preparation and deep knowledge. His modern counterpart takes a different approach

Ancient strategist Sun Tzu called for preparation and deep knowledge. His modern counterpart takes a different approach