Main propose of this paper is to analyze the strategic culture of China.
Advocates of thesis of strategic culture, both in China and Western countries, persistently claim that China has uniquely non-belligerent strategic culture which has been formulated in its long history, and that China firmly maintains its pacifistic character no matter how China's security environment becomes deteriorated.
They persistently contend that military thought of Sunzi, a prominent strategic thinker in ancient China, is a humanitarian pacifist, ant that modern China as well as ancient China is essentially a peace-loving country because modern China also employs Sunzi's traditional non-aggressive military thought.
However, this argument is fundamentally misleading because tremendous number of sentences and expressions of Sunzi cited in China's classical and modern documents and speeches on military strategy does not necessarily reflect reconciliatory tendency of China's actual strategic behavior. Almost no academic study on China's strategic culture could prove that China has consistently employed a pacifistic strategic behavior in its history. Most of researchers on this field have failed to show a significant positive causal relationship between China's peace-loving rhetoric and its actual behavior.
Likewise, even though ancient Sunzi also stresses the imperative importance of coherent and comprehensive grand strategy which not only comprises military but also extensively covers political, diplomatic, psychological and economic factors, it does not automatically mean that China has almost always maintained a farsighted and coherent grand strategy.
Academic studies on major warfare and diplomatic negotiations among the major countries during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period usually show that the main reason why Sunzi emphasized the need of minimal exertion of military force and coherent grand strategy was mainly because he intended to reduce the huge cost of actual battle thus avoiding an unexpected protract of armed conflicts; otherwise his country would be suffered by an unfavorable risk of diplomatic and military intervention by other hostile countries.
Idealizing of Sunzi in Western countries has been endorsed when some leading military analysts and politicians such as Hart and Weinberger criticized the existing Western military strategy and thinking, with stressing a sharp contrast between the reality of political and military institutions and idea of Sunzi, in order to emphasize the necessity of promoting a radical reform of existing political and military institutions.
In China of the 21st century, China's major strategic thinkers utilize Sunzi to convince the mainstream of China's public opinion to accept their blueprint of increasing China's international role in a prudent, patient and tightly self-restrained manner without carelessly activating a devastating confrontation/crisis with the existing powerful hegemonic countries, while some belligerent Chinese claim emotionally to accelerate the pace of increasing China's international influence and to employ a more coercive approach to challenge the “iniquitous order of international ancien regime dominated by the United States.”

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