Guo Huaruo

Who is Guo Huaruo?

Guo Huaruo was a military strategist from China. Alastair Iain Johnston, author of "Cultural Realism and Strategy in Maoist China," said that until the mid-1980s Guo was "the CCP's most authoritative interpreter and annotator" of the book The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Samuel B. Griffith, a translator of The Art of War, wrote in the introduction of his edition that Guo was "practically unknown in the West".

Johnson said 'Guo stressed that from a Marxist-Leninist perspective the notion of "not fighting and subduing the enemy"'—the core of the conventional interpretation of Sun Zi—was un-Marxist, since class enemies could not be credibly defeated without the application of violence.'

Around June 4, 1937, Guo was the dean of studies of Qingyang Infantry School.