Qu Tian: From *The Art of War* to the Mindset of Going Global | Late 2025

"It was never a sprint."

By Qu Tian, ATM Capital

Many people frame going global as a multiple-choice question: stay in China, or venture farther out. But for Qu Tian, it has always felt more like a prolonged act of timing — timing with trends, timing with patience, timing with oneself. It's not about who runs faster, but whose clock aligns more precisely with the era.

As one of China's first-generation internet product managers, Qu Tian began investing in mobile internet in 2007 and was an early investor in Meituan, UCWeb, and other projects. In 2017, he moved himself overseas, putting down roots in Jakarta, Indonesia, betting on Southeast Asia and the globalization of Chinese companies at a moment when almost no one could see the direction clearly.

Back then, J&T Express was still a vague logistics concept, and e-commerce packages were nowhere near as dense on Indonesia's streets as they are today. He witnessed the company's three life-or-death breakthroughs — from Southeast Asia, to China, and then to the world.

Outsiders later liked to explain all this with "foresight." But in his own words, the more honest term is "endurance": before the wave truly arrives, you must first learn to stand alone on the shore, enduring the long exposure.

Over nine years, Qu Tian has seen too many companies treat going global as merely "opening one more branch office," and too many people turn back after setbacks. His summary of these failures: a lack of deep localization capability.

"Like immigration, you have to put down roots in that country to truly understand the market and do business well."

Qu Tian believes that true globalization more closely resembles a second startup: organizations must be rewritten, cultures retranslated, even a founder's own calibration of victory and defeat must be recalibrated. And more important than scale is how a set of capabilities migrates, reconstructs, and amplifies across different markets.

Recently, Qu Tian has been rereading The Art of War, using its ancient lines to examine contemporary business — first-strike and endurance, strategy and calculation, the Five Factors and Seven Calculations — to calibrate the posture of Chinese companies' expeditions, and to organize the scattered thoughts from his phone.

Among them, reverence for cycles, and also self-interrogation: when China still abounds with opportunity, why choose the path no one takes? His answer: "Some people are suited to run on shore; others are destined to build ships and sail far."

Qu Tian chose to share these reflections for "The End of 2025," Anyong Waves' year-end series. It reads more like a航海日志 stained with mud: about how to establish supply lines in unfamiliar markets, how to judge the true measure of "right timing, right place, right people," how to hold onto win rates amid the clamor of anxious slogans.

He returns repeatedly to one line: the victorious army wins first, then seeks battle. Most companies habitually charge in first, then pray they can win. Nine years in Southeast Asia have convinced him that true speed often comes from earlier slowness — completing your calculations before others have moved, taking your seat at the table before the wave arrives.

"The End of 2025" is still accepting submissions. We welcome thinkers from the business and investment worlds to reach out via our backend or at chenzhiyan@36kr.com. Believing that as times change, only genuine thought endures.

Part 01

First-Strike and Endurance

The Art of War: Waging War

"War is a matter of vital importance to the state; the province of life or death; the road to survival or ruin. It is mandatory that it be thoroughly studied."

Sun Tzu opens by speaking of war's weight in the extreme — this is not something decided on instinct, but a major action concerning survival itself. Applied today, corporate globalization is exactly the same. Many founders easily treat it as a second growth curve, as if there's ample room for trial and error. But reality is often more brutal: a failed globalization effort doesn't just lose money; it can directly disrupt strategic rhythm, consume core talent, and even damage organizational confidence.

Over the years I've seen many companies doing well domestically, then assuming overseas is simply market replication. But when they truly enter an environment of unfamiliar institutions, unfamiliar culture, unfamiliar consumption habits, they discover that many capabilities they relied on are being reset.

So I often say a simple truth: going global is not "opening one more branch office," it's "a second startup."

If you view going global with the attitude of a fight to the death, you will naturally be more cautious and more serious in preparation.

The Art of War: Strategic Attack

"Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory."

Translated into today's business language, this is very direct — don't charge in first, then figure out how to win; first confirm you can probably win, then enter the battlefield.

But in reality, a great many companies do the exact opposite.

A popular phrase in recent years: "Go global or go extinct." To some degree, this created collective anxiety. I've met founders whose entire rationale for going global boils down to one sentence: our competitors went.

This is the classic "fight first, win later" — enter first, then pray you can win.

Truly mature companies often complete massive preparation when the outside world can barely see any movement. Before entering any new country, J&T would repeatedly calculate logistics density, e-commerce penetration, geographic structure, and local partnership resources. When formal entry appeared to happen quickly, it was only because the prior calculations were sufficient.

The Art of War: Waging War

"Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril."

This is probably the most quoted line from The Art of War, but few companies truly achieve it. Understanding competitors isn't hard; a few industry reports suffice. What's truly difficult is — seeing yourself clearly.

Many globalization failures aren't essentially strategic errors, but capability mismatches. Some take the efficiency honed in China's intense competition as a global passport; others mistakenly assume brand power can migrate across cultures. But commerce is never linear — an advantage in one market can instantly become a burden in another.

Taoism speaks of "self-knowledge as illumination"; harder than penetrating others is objectively recognizing your own boundaries. When to move fast, when to stay steady, which capabilities are true moats, which are merely阶段性红利 — without clarity on these questions, failure is almost inevitable.

Part 02

The Five Factors and Seven Calculations

I particularly like one especially "engineered" section in The Art of War's Waging War chapter — the Five Factors and Seven Calculations. It doesn't teach you how to win a single battle, but how before battle begins, to identify the determinants of victory and defeat, how to pull both sides onto the same sheet of paper and calculate clearly.

First use the "Five Factors" to frame the underlying plate of victory determinants: the Way, Heaven, Earth, Command, and Method; then use the "Seven Calculations" to concretize these into seven comparative questions: which ruler has the Way, which commander has ability, which side has Heaven and Earth, which executes法令, whose troops are stronger, whose soldiers better trained, whose rewards and punishments are clearer. Following this sequence to calculate and benchmark, many seemingly abstract judgments become concrete — you'll clearly know where your advantages lie, where your weaknesses are, whether this battle should be fought now, where it should be fought, how to fight with greater odds.

"Therefore I say: Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. The Way, Heaven, Earth, Command, and Method must be examined."

"The Way means inducing the people to have the same aim as the leadership, so that they will share death and share life, without fear of danger."

"The Way" is something I've felt increasingly deeply running a fund overseas. What globalization fears most isn't external competition, but internal disunity. Sun Tzu puts it directly — shared purpose above and below. You must fully mobilize employees to understand and support the CEO's decisions, so that all are willing to live and die together, unafraid of danger.

Going global is dangerous; you encounter too many variables: policy, exchange rates, compliance, competitor tactics, supply chain — any one going wrong can take you down. If the team isn't of one mind, you easily fall apart overseas.

We've seen that companies successful at going global generally also have the strongest organizational capabilities among Chinese enterprises; shared purpose is importantly about corporate culture and values. Of course, incentive mechanisms are also crucial — employees must fully share in the enterprise's value appreciation. Ideals alone aren't enough; interests matter too. As J&T's team often says: "Short-term depends on opportunity, mid-term on interests, long-term on culture."

"Heaven signifies night and day, cold and heat, times and seasons."

"Heaven," from a globalization perspective, means macro trends. Are you standing on a wave about to depart? Previously it was mobile internet, e-commerce; now many speak of AI, robotics, autonomous driving — these are ten-, twenty-year long-term opportunities. Seize such opportunity, and you may create ten-billion or hundred-billion-dollar companies.

What J&T grasped back then was essentially the major opportunity of emerging-market e-commerce globalization. Heaven also includes the world economy's macro environment; sometimes when the macro environment is poor, no matter how hard you try it's difficult; when the macro moment comes and you're prepared, you can ride the momentum.

So I've always said, timing is truly hard to predict, but you can anticipate a larger direction — such as Chinese companies going global, emerging markets, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East as long-term opportunities. With Heaven clear, you know whether you're applying force in the right direction.

"Earth comprises distances, great and small; danger and security; open ground and narrow passes; the chances of life and death."

"Earth" is terrain advantage, but in corporate globalization it's not just location on a map, but where you choose to切入, where you sit in the industrial chain's ecological niche, whether your path favors you. You might choose the US and Europe, like Chinese entrepreneurs first going to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou; or you might choose emerging markets like Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East. We often say "whoever wins Indonesia wins Southeast Asia," but this isn't a slogan — you must choose where your odds are greatest based on what you do, your team situation, your resource endowment.

Many companies want to come to Indonesia; I ask why, they say they saw others succeed there, a friend told them Indonesia is good — this is blindness. True "Earth" is your understanding of this market: is it viable terrain or deadly ground? Dangerous or easy? Do you have conditions to establish yourself? Choose wrong on Earth, and everything that follows becomes siege warfare — siege means others have already laid out their positions, built defensive works waiting for you, they rest while you labor, you suffer massive attrition with small odds of success, often not worth the cost.

"The Commander stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage, and strictness."

"The Commander" is your overseas leader, your country head. Sun Tzu names five dimensions: wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage, strictness. Applied today: does the person you send have judgment, have prestige, can they lead a team, dare they take responsibility, can they establish rules. More crucially — going global requires "physical presence overseas,"常驻本地, not remote command. This person can't be a pure professional manager; they must have an entrepreneurial mindset. The company must also give sufficient trust, authority, and reward mechanisms, otherwise overseas remains a "branch office mentality," unable to achieve true localization. Much of globalization's success or failure ultimately comes down to whether this "Commander" is capable.

"Method and discipline are the marshaling of the army in its proper subdivisions, the gradations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure."

"Method" seems to speak of military institutions, but it's really your organizational structure, management system, supply maintenance, military regulations. In corporate terms: rules and regulations, middle and back offices, financial systems, information systems, supply chain support. Even with favorable timing, terrain, and unity, whether you can execute in the end depends on "Method." Many companies going global have fierce front ends but back-end systems that can't keep up, becoming more chaotic the more they expand. Without strong middle and back offices, you can't support rapid global development. Especially as going global is a complex multi-country, multi-currency, multi-compliance system; without "Method," your advantages can't be沉淀下来, leaving only consumption.

After the Five Factors, Sun Tzu immediately provides the "Seven Calculations." I particularly like this section because unlike mysticism, it reads more like a "pre-globalization checklist." Don't go by feeling, don't be carried away by one "go global or go extinct" slogan — pull both sides onto the same sheet of paper, compare line by line, calculate line by line. Sun Tzu states directly: with these seven clearly compared, victory or defeat is largely determined.

"Which ruler has the Way?" — Which side's CEO can achieve unity between leadership and ranks?

This mainly looks at which team's founder has sufficient influence, which team has sufficient cohesion. Strong cohesion and unity naturally mean stronger combat effectiveness. Going global has many external variables; what it fears most isn't strong opponents, but internal disunity — headquarters with one idea, overseas with another, product with one logic, operations with another, finally pulling against each other. If you can't achieve shared purpose, you've already lost half the battle before it begins.

"Which commander has ability?" — Which side's generals are more capable?

Not only must headquarters be strong enough, but the CEO you station in this country must also be strong enough. If this CEO isn't capable, this country's business will struggle to advance. Many companies do well domestically but falter overseas; the core reason often isn't wrong strategy, but an inadequate leader, insufficient authority, inadequate incentives, with overseas finally becoming "vendor-managed." With inadequate generals, relying on remote command, it's truly hard to win.

"Which side has Heaven and Earth?" — Which side possesses favorable timing and terrain?

Whoever aligns with major trends, whoever has clear advantages in their ecological niche, has higher odds of success. Heaven is trends; Earth is battlefield selection. Many companies choose markets too crudely: go where the market is large, go where population is numerous, but the real key is — do you have structural advantages in this place? If you're naturally at a disadvantage, then no matter how hard you try it's like siege warfare, massive attrition, not worth the cost.

"Which side maintains method and discipline?" — Whose regulations are more strictly enforced?

Put plainly: whose systems are more complete, whose execution is more effective, whose oversight and incentives of the team are more effective. Going global doesn't rely on one or two people being fierce, but on whether the system can operate. Loose institutions, unclear processes, finance and compliance not keeping up — the faster you expand, the easier to fall into chaos. Strict method and discipline isn't about controlling to death, but about maintaining combat effectiveness in globalization's high-uncertainty environment, enabling continuous iteration and continuous correction.

"Which army is stronger?" — Whose forces are more powerful?

Here "forces" means resources today: your cash ammunition, team scale, supply chain capability, ecosystem partner network — who is stronger overall. War is expensive; going global is equally so. Insufficient resources, and you're easily dragged down in a war of attrition. You don't need to be the richest, but you must calculate clearly how long you can fight, how far you can sustain, otherwise you're blindly entering battle.

"Which side's officers and men are more highly trained?" — Whose soldiers are better drilled?

No matter how good the strategy, it ultimately depends on frontline execution. Is the overseas team trained? Are processes running smoothly? Do position capabilities match? Many globalization failures aren't wrong direction, but "untrained." Especially in emerging markets, to bring China's efficiency advantages into play requires massive training and management fundamentals behind it; otherwise the troops can't fight.

"Which side is more constant in reward and punishment?" — Whose rewards and punishments are clearer, whose management more effective?

This is particularly crucial. With good incentives, people are willing to fight; with unclear rewards and punishments, the organization loosens. What globalization fears most is "same reward whether you do much or little" — eventually even capable people will be ground down. To motivate the team, you must make rules clear, make benefit mechanisms solid, let people see hope and know boundaries.

The essence of Sun Tzu's "Seven Calculations" is dragging victory and defeat out of emotion, turning them into something calculable. After asking and comparing these seven, many so-called "opportunities" and "trending sectors" become less hallucinatory; you'll more clearly know whether you truly have odds of success, which piece you're actually missing. If three or four of seven are clearly unfavorable, proceed with caution; if you find some key items fundamentally unfillable, the most rational choice isn't to force ahead, but to change battlefield, change approach, or first strengthen yourself. You can sail on others' ships,绑定 with major giants going global. Or as an investor, invest in a company where you see good opportunity.

In battles like globalization, once you choose wrong, what you consume is the enterprise's most precious time, money, and people. Win rate is always more important than passion.

The Art of War: Waging War

"The skillful warrior does not raise a second levy, neither are his supply-wagons loaded more than twice... He forages from the enemy; one cartload of the enemy's provisions is equivalent to twenty of one's own."

The previous sections discussed strategy and calculation; this passage is very pragmatic: if you're truly going global, truly fighting, you can't constantly调动 troops and ship supplies from home base, or costs will crush you — you must learn to establish supply systems locally.

In plain language, four words — deep localization.

I've seen some companies that after years of going global remain highly dependent on domestic teams and supply chains; this almost certainly won't go far. High personnel costs, slow response speed, difficulty truly understanding local markets. Truly mature global companies quickly complete three things: local hiring, local supply, local造血.

Bringing backbone staff from China is necessary, but can only be a minority. What truly sustains the business must be local teams. Globalization isn't transplanting China's model there, but letting the enterprise "grow" in that country.

Part 03

Sun Wu Was Also a "Globalization Entrepreneur"

If we shift attention from the tactical perspectives of "first-strike" and "endurance," "strategy" and "calculation," to look at this book macroscopically, we discover it actually records a highly typical "successful globalization."

According to historical records, Sun Wu originally came from an aristocratic family in Qi. Qi had already risen to dominance in the early Spring and Autumn period, and the Sun family long participated in state governance and military decision-making, accumulating rich strategic experience. Later, political turmoil and instability in Qi forced Sun Wu to leave his homeland, eventually arriving in Wu. There, he not only organized his family's传承 and personal research into The Art of War, but more importantly, brought an entire set of system capabilities that had served a powerful state into a country not yet risen, ultimately helping Wu defeat powerful enemies and rise among the Spring and Autumn hegemons.

If we view the Spring and Autumn era as a larger competitive world, then what Sun Wu accomplished was in fact a typical "going global" — from mature system to emerging power, using already-validated methodology to reshape another country's competitive structure.

This moved me deeply. It gradually made me realize that what is truly valuable is never any specific tactic, but systematic experience沉淀 through long practice. When such experience is brought into a new environment, it often releases势能 far exceeding that of local participants.

To some degree, this is also what ATM Capital is attempting.

When we invested in J&T in 2017, it was far from the global logistics network spanning multiple continents that it later became. We accompanied it from its Indonesia start, gradually expanding across Southeast Asia, then entering the China market, and continuing toward Latin America, the Middle East, and even Europe and North America. Along the way, what I saw was not merely a company's growing scale, but a set of capabilities continuously migrating, reconstructing, and amplifying across different markets.

J&T's significance lies not only in becoming Chinese express delivery's globalization champion, but in proving one thing: Chinese companies are fully capable of establishing long-term advantages in global competition.

And when we possess the complete experience of accompanying such a company's growth, a clearer aspiration naturally emerges — to use these validated cognitions and methods to help more Chinese companies go global, growing into true global champions.

Many companies ask us a very direct question in communication: what exactly can you provide for going global?

This question seems simple, yet touches globalization's core difficulty. Because once enterprises leave their home environment, what they face is no longer mere product competition, but the integrated博弈 of strategic choice, capital structure, organizational coordination, and external relations.

There's a line from The Art of War's Strategic Attack chapter that I deeply认同: "The skillful warrior wins his victories without seeking fame." Those who truly excel at combat don't rely on clever risky moves to win, but understand choosing battlefields they can win. Many seemingly "easy" victories were actually decided before battle began — decided by strategic direction, decided by resource allocation, decided by whether advance positioning was completed.

Historically, Liu Bang's ultimate victory in the Chu-Han contention wasn't merely because any single battle was fought beautifully, but because behind him existed an entire mutually supporting capability structure: Zhang Liang运筹帷幄, responsible for formulating key strategy; Xiao He stabilized internal affairs and supply, giving war sustained resources; Chen Ping moved between diplomacy and intelligence, providing support for alliances and judgment. Thus the victories of the skillful warrior are not marked by wisdom or courage. Often people only remember battlefield victories, while overlooking these deeper forces.

Looking back at this history, I increasingly clearly realize that a system capable of long-term victory never relies on single-point breakthroughs, but on the coordination of multi-dimensional capabilities.

This also gradually became how ATM defines its role — not merely providing capital, but participating in strategic discussion, helping enterprises understand market structure, while connecting local ecosystems and partnership networks. In other words, we hope to simultaneously承担 the functions of "Zhang Liang," "Xiao He," and "Chen Ping": both helping enterprises make critical choices, providing resources needed for sustained operations, and as much as possible reducing risks from information asymmetry.

In China, as business systems mature, large enterprises often already possess complete organizations to承担 these functions. But once going overseas, the situation changes. Teams that both deeply understand Chinese companies and can truly落地 these capabilities locally are actually quite rare. This structural gap is precisely the meaning of our existence.

Returning to Sun Wu's story, its enduring relevance lies not merely in its abundance of strategy, but in revealing a simple yet often ignored fact: Chinese enterprises today stand at a similar historical node. Whoever completes capability migration earlier will be more likely to seize initiative in future global competition. And in this sense, viewing Sun Wu as a "globalization entrepreneur" may not be merely historical imagination, but a reality spanning two millennia.

Therefore, as more and more Chinese enterprises begin turning their gaze overseas, I am actually quite certain in my heart: globalization will not be a brief wave, but a continuous long river lasting decades. And what we hope to do is not chase the wave itself, but on this long river, help those enterprises truly possessing potential find their own航道.

Layout | Yao Nan Image source | IC Photo

Recommended Reading

The flow of money, the rise and fall of people