5D Library › Social Network Topology, Structural Holes and Complex Contagion · 中文
Chapter 7 Reading the Classics: Vertical and Horizontal Alliances, Three Beneficial Friends and the Four Kinds of People
This chapter reads the modern research of earlier chapters beside several classical Chinese texts. The aim is not to show that the ancients already understood network science, but to see how classical texts understood alliance and estrangement, the gains and losses of friendship, and the benefits and costs of a closed community; and to state two boundaries. First, the texts themselves raise problems as historical sources, and some of their stories may not be history. Second, the statecraft of the Warring States strategists rested on deception and zero-sum competition between states, which is ethically quite different from modern network research premised on mutually beneficial cooperation. All translations in this chapter are the author’s own.
The vertical and the horizontal alliance
In the middle and later Warring States period the state of Qin grew ever stronger. The “vertical alliance” (hezong) was the north–south union of the six eastern states (Han, Zhao, Wei, Qi, Chu and Yan) against Qin; the “horizontal alliance” (lianheng) was Qin’s policy of making separate ties with each eastern state, breaking up their union and defeating them one by one. The persuaders who travelled between the states were known as the “vertical and horizontal strategists” (zonghengjia).
In the language of earlier chapters, these can be read as two structural strategies: the vertical alliance builds closure among the six states, so that any state breaking the pact would be known to all the others and would bear the consequences; the horizontal alliance has Qin build bilateral ties with each state while trying to cut the ties among the six, placing itself at the centre of a structural hole. The strategists themselves were archetypal brokers: their value came precisely from the distrust and lack of communication between states. But this is only a structural analogy: Warring States diplomacy was a game among a few rulers and advisers, entirely different in nature from today’s measurable social networks made up of very many individuals.
Source text
（苏秦）说秦王书十上而说不行。……归至家，妻不下纴，嫂不为炊，父母不与言。苏秦喟叹曰：「妻不以我为夫，嫂不以我为叔，父母不以我为子，是皆秦之罪也。」乃夜发书，陈箧数十，得太公《阴符》之谋，伏而诵之，简练以为揣摩。读书欲睡，引锥自刺其股，血流至足。……
将说楚王，路过洛阳，父母闻之，清宫除道，张乐设饮，郊迎三十里；妻侧目而视，倾耳而听；嫂蛇行匍伏，四拜自跪而谢。苏秦曰：「嫂何前倨而后卑也？」嫂曰：「以季子之位尊而多金。」苏秦曰：「嗟乎！贫穷则父母不子，富贵则亲戚畏惧。人生世上，势位富贵，盖可忽乎哉！」(刘向 集录 1985)
(Stratagems of the Warring States, “Qin 1”: “Su Qin first urged the horizontal alliance on King Hui of Qin”)
In the author’s translation: Su Qin submitted memorials to the King of Qin ten times, and his proposals were not adopted. … When he returned home, his wife would not leave her loom, his sister-in-law would not cook for him, and his parents would not speak to him. Su Qin sighed: “My wife does not treat me as a husband, my sister-in-law does not treat me as a brother-in-law, my parents do not treat me as a son; all this is the fault of Qin.” That night he opened his book chests, set out dozens of them, and found the Yinfu strategies of the Grand Duke; he bent over them, recited them, and selected and drilled them to learn how to read men’s minds. When he grew sleepy over his books, he stabbed his thigh with an awl until the blood ran down to his feet. … Later, on his way to persuade the King of Chu, he passed through Luoyang. When his parents heard, they cleaned the house and swept the road, laid on music and a banquet, and went thirty li out of the city to meet him; his wife dared not look at him straight and listened with her head inclined; his sister-in-law crawled on the ground like a snake, bowed four times and knelt to beg forgiveness. Su Qin asked: “Sister-in-law, why were you so haughty before and so humble now?” She answered: “Because your position is high and your gold plentiful.” Su Qin said: “Alas! When I was poor my parents did not treat me as a son; now that I am rich and honoured my relatives fear me. In this life, how can power, position and wealth be ignored!”
The passage is often told as a story of perseverance, “stabbing the thigh with an awl”. From this book’s point of view, it depicts a network of relationships remade by status: the same family members were cold to Su Qin when he was poor and abased themselves when he was rich. The conclusion Su Qin draws is “how can power, position and wealth be ignored”, that is, the value of relationships depends on status. This is exactly a view of networks that this book does not take: relationships as tools that rise and fall with power.
A problem of sources: when did Su Qin live?
The story above comes from the Stratagems of the Warring States; the biography of Su Qin in the Records of the Grand Historian has a similar account. But the reliability of these records is highly questionable.
Source text
太史公曰：苏秦兄弟三人，皆游说诸侯以显名，其术长于权变。而苏秦被反间以死，天下共笑之，讳学其术。然世言苏秦多异，异时事有类之者皆附之苏秦。夫苏秦起闾阎，连六国从亲，此其智有过人者。吾故列其行事，次其时序，毋令独蒙恶声焉。(司马迁 撰 1982)
(Records of the Grand Historian, “Biography of Su Qin”)
In the author’s translation: The Grand Historian says: Su Qin and his two brothers all won fame by persuading the feudal lords, and their art excelled in adapting to circumstances. Su Qin died when his double game was exposed, and the whole world laughed at him and avoided learning his methods. Yet the stories told about Su Qin vary a great deal, and similar affairs from other times have all been attached to him. Su Qin rose from the common lanes and joined the six states in a vertical alliance; this shows that his intelligence surpassed others’. I have therefore set out his deeds and arranged them in order of time, so that he alone should not bear an evil name.
Sima Qian himself was aware that the legends about Su Qin had absorbed many other people’s deeds. In 1973 a silk manuscript was excavated from Han Tomb No. 3 at Mawangdui in Changsha, Hunan; its editors named it the Letters and Speeches of the Warring States Strategists (Zhanguo zonghengjia shu). It has 27 chapters, of which 11 have parallels in the received Stratagems of the Warring States or the Records, while the other 16 are long-lost texts; more than a dozen are letters and speeches of Su Qin (马王堆汉墓帛书整理小组 编 1976). Tang Lan called it “precious historical material that Sima Qian never saw” and held that Su Qin’s biography would have to be rewritten in its light (唐兰 1976). On the basis of the manuscript and other material, Tang Lan, Yang Kuan and other scholars concluded that Su Qin’s main activity fell in the reigns of King Zhao of Yan and King Min of Qi (roughly 300 to 284 BCE), that he worked as an agent for Yan inside Qi, and that he was executed by King Min of Qi in 284 BCE, whereas Zhang Yi had died around 310 BCE. Su Qin was thus about a generation younger than Zhang Yi, and much of the Records’ account, which places Su Qin before Zhang Yi, makes them fellow students and rivals, and casts Su Qin as the leader of the vertical alliance against Qin “wearing the seals of minister of six states”, is unreliable; Yang Kuan also argued that many of the long persuasion speeches attributed to Su Qin in the Stratagems and the Records were composed later (杨宽 1998). Some scholars hold that Sima Qian was not entirely without access to such material, and the exact dates and deeds are still debated. Either way, the story of “stabbing the thigh” above is better treated as a literary narrative circulating between the late Warring States and the early Han than as established fact.
Zhang Yi and the “six li”
Source text
张仪……谓楚使者曰：「臣有奉邑六里，愿以献大王左右。」楚使者曰：「臣受令于王，以商於之地六百里，不闻六里。」
太史公曰：……要之，此两人真倾危之士哉！(司马迁 撰 1982)
(Records of the Grand Historian, “Biography of Zhang Yi”)
In the author’s translation: Zhang Yi … said to the envoy of Chu: “I have a fief of six li, which I wish to present to your king.” The envoy of Chu said: “My orders from my king were for the six hundred li of the land of Shangyu; I have heard nothing of six li.” The Grand Historian says: … In short, these two men were truly men who overturned and endangered states!
According to the Records, Zhang Yi used the offer of six hundred li of land as bait to induce King Huai of Chu to break off relations with Qi; once the Qi–Chu alliance was broken, the six hundred li became six. This is the archetypal move of the horizontal strategy: using deception to cut the ties between one’s rivals. Sima Qian’s verdict on Su Qin and Zhang Yi was that they were “men who overturned and endangered states”.
Note
The ethical boundary. The “brokerage” of the strategists rested on three premises: that relations between states are zero-sum; that gaps in information and mutual distrust are resources to be exploited; and that deception is acceptable in order to cut a rival’s alliances. Modern network research on structural holes accepts none of these premises. Chapter 2 noted that in organisational cultures of high commitment, brokers who exploit gaps in information are rejected, while integrators who “fill” structural holes and connect people who are cut off from one another gain more. What this book’s checklist in Chapter 8 cares about is letting a team see information it would otherwise miss and letting good practices that need reinforcement cross between groups, not sowing discord, manipulating people or profiting from other people’s separation.
Three friends who benefit
In the author’s translation: Confucius said: “There are three kinds of friends who benefit and three who harm. To befriend the upright, the trustworthy and the well-informed is beneficial. To befriend the obsequious, the ingratiating and the glib is harmful.” The gist of Zhu Xi’s commentary is that pianbi means being practised in the outward forms of ceremony without being upright, shanrou means being skilled at pleasing without being trustworthy, and pianning means being practised in speech without real knowledge from seeing and hearing (朱熹 撰 1983).
Confucius is discussing how friendship affects a person’s virtue, not how information flows through a network. But the three contrasts can be read beside several of this book’s concepts. The contrast between “the well-informed” and “the glib” is about whether a friend can bring real information you do not already have, which connects with the “novelty” of Chapter 1: a friend who only agrees with you and tells you what you like to hear brings redundant information. The contrast between “the upright” and “the ingratiating” can be read beside the cascades of Chapter 6: if everyone in a group is “ingratiating” and says only what others want to hear, no one corrects a wrong judgment; an “upright” friend is like someone who dares to state his or her own signal, and it is such people who make it possible to break a cascade.
In the author’s translation: Confucius said: “The noble person is inclusive and not partisan; the petty person is partisan and not inclusive.” (Analects, “Wei zheng”) Confucius said: “The noble person is dignified but not contentious, sociable but not factional.” (Analects, “Wei Ling Gong”)
“Inclusive and not partisan” and “sociable but not factional” describe an ideal of wide association without being drawn into a closed clique. In network language, “partisan” and “factional” are close to tightly closed circles that exclude outsiders, and “inclusive” and “sociable” close to having ties in several groups. But Confucius is speaking of the character of the noble person and of the distinction between public and private, not of network structure; the reading here is only a suggestion.
The “Discourses of Qi”: do not let the four kinds of people live mixed together
The author’s original framework quoted “assess the land and grade the levy, and the people will not move away; if government does not lü the old, the people will not be tou”, attributing it to the Guanzi chapter “Xiao kuang”. On checking, these lines appear in Guan Zhong’s answer to Duke Huan of Qi in the “Discourses of Qi” of the Discourses of the States; “Xiao kuang” records the same dialogue with differences of wording (it has “assess the land and grade its levies”) (徐元诰 撰，王树民、沈长云 点校 2002; 黎翔凤 撰，梁运华 整理 2004).
Source text
相地而衰征，则民不移；政不旅旧，则民不偷；山泽各致其时，则民不苟；陆阜陵墐、井田畴均，则民不憾；无夺民时，则百姓富；牺牲不略，则牛羊遂。(徐元诰 撰，王树民、沈长云 点校 2002)
(Discourses of the States, “Discourses of Qi”)
Cui here means grading: if land is taxed according to its quality, the people will not migrate. Commentators disagree on how to read lü in “government does not lü the old”, and this book does not force an interpretation; for tou one may compare the Analects (“Tai Bo”): “if old friends are not forgotten, the people will not be tou”, which Zhu Xi glosses as “thin”, that is, cold in human feeling (朱熹 撰 1983). These lines are about taxation, the farming seasons and policies for keeping the population settled. Reading “the people will not move away” as network “mobility”, or “will not be tou” as tie strength, is too strained. This book notes their source and original meaning here and does not treat them as a classical text about network structure. Two other passages from the same text bear on network structure more directly.
Source text
四民者，勿使杂处，杂处则其言哤，其事易。……令夫士，群萃而州处，闲燕则父与父言义，子与子言孝，其事君者言敬，其幼者言弟。少而习焉，其心安焉，不见异物而迁焉。是故其父兄之教不肃而成，其子弟之学不劳而能。
伍之人祭祀同福，死丧同恤，祸灾共之。人与人相畴，家与家相畴，世同居，少同游。故夜战声相闻，足以不乖；昼战目相见，足以相识。其欢欣足以相死。居同乐，行同和，死同哀。是故守则同固，战则同强。(徐元诰 撰，王树民、沈长云 点校 2002)
(Discourses of the States, “Discourses of Qi”)
In the author’s translation: The four kinds of people (scholars, farmers, artisans and merchants) must not live mixed together; if they do, their talk becomes confused and their occupations change. … Let the scholars gather and live together; at leisure the fathers will speak with fathers of righteousness, the sons with sons of filial piety, those who serve the ruler of reverence, and the young of respect for elders. Accustomed to this from childhood, their minds are at peace, and they do not change course on seeing other things. So the teaching of fathers and elder brothers succeeds without severity, and the learning of sons and younger brothers is mastered without toil. … The people of one wu (a unit of five households) share blessings at the sacrifices, console one another at deaths and funerals, and bear calamities together. Person is paired with person and household with household; they live together for generations and play together from childhood. So when fighting at night they hear one another’s voices and do not stray apart; when fighting by day they see one another’s faces and know one another. Their affection is enough for them to die for one another. They rejoice together at home, act in harmony on the march, and mourn together in death. So in defence they stand firm together, and in battle they are strong together.
These two passages are among the clearest descriptions of “closure” in classical literature. Guan Zhong deliberately had people of the same occupation live together (what we now call homophily), so that knowledge and norms passed effortlessly between generations; and he organised residents into wu units who lived together for generations and played together from childhood, so that on the battlefield they knew and trusted one another and were willing to die for one another. This is very close to Coleman’s argument for closure in Chapter 2: dense networks bring trust, norms and sanctions (Coleman 1988).
But the passages state the cost of closure just as clearly: “they do not change course on seeing other things.” The very purpose of the design is to keep people from seeing other possibilities, so that they do not change occupation or ambition. In the language of Chapters 1 and 2, it deliberately eliminates structural holes and weak ties; sociological research also shows that homophily limits the information and opportunities people encounter (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook 2001). Moreover, this is a social organisation designed from the top down by the state to serve taxation, labour service and military mobilisation (the “Discourses of Qi” calls it “setting up internal administration and lodging military orders within it”); the closure it seeks is for the sake of control and mobilisation, not for the development of the members themselves. In modern societies, occupational and residential mobility and contact across groups are seen as part of individual freedom and social vitality; this book quotes these passages as a mirror for understanding “closure”, not as a model to imitate.
The limits of reading them together
Reading these classical texts beside modern network research has three limits. First, problems with the sources themselves: many of the persuasion speeches in the Stratagems of the Warring States were composed later, and the Records’ account of Su Qin contains serious errors of chronology; these stories are literature first and history only possibly. Second, different objects: the classical texts discuss diplomacy between states, the character of the noble person and the state’s organisation of its subjects, while modern research discusses measurable relationships between individuals; calling the vertical alliance “closure” and the strategists “brokers” is only a structural analogy. Third, different values: neither the statecraft of the strategists nor Guan Zhong’s design for social control is premised on individual freedom and mutual benefit, and this book does not adopt their premises. The plain-language readings in this chapter are the author’s own, and the commentarial tradition often offers different interpretations.
Chapter summary
The vertical and horizontal alliances can be read as two structural strategies, closure and brokerage, and the strategists as the brokers of the Warring States; but the accounts of Su Qin in the Stratagems and the Records have serious source problems, and the Mawangdui Letters and Speeches of the Warring States Strategists, together with the work of Tang Lan, Yang Kuan and others, shows that Su Qin’s main activity came after Zhang Yi. Zhang Yi’s “six li” is the archetype of using deception to cut an alliance, and this book explicitly rejects such statecraft. The “three friends who benefit” of the Analects can be read beside the novelty of information and the breaking of cascades, and “sociable but not factional” and “inclusive and not partisan” describe an ideal of wide association without factions. The line “assess the land and grade the levy” quoted by the author comes from the “Discourses of Qi” and concerns taxation and keeping the population settled, so the analogy with network structure is strained; two other passages from the same text, “the four kinds of people must not live mixed together” and “the people of one wu”, clearly set out both the trust and cohesion that closure brings and its cost, “they do not change course on seeing other things”. The next chapter offers a checklist and a trial protocol.
References
Fan, Y. (2026). Social Network Topology, Structural Holes and Complex Contagion: From the Strength of Weak Ties and Preferential Attachment to Information Cascades, Read Beside Classical Chinese Diplomacy [社会网络拓扑、结构洞与复杂传染的数学模型] (Version 1.0.0). 5D Library. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23764990 · Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).