The state of Qi was preparing to attack Wei, and Wei sent an envoy to Zhao, saying: "The King of Qi intends to attack Wei, but fears that Zhao will come to Wei's aid. Now Qi is powerful, and Wei cannot match it; Wei is weak and no match for Qi. Should Qi attack Wei, Wei is certain to perish, and Zhao will also be in peril. If Zhao does not rescue Wei, then Wei will turn and submit to Qi, making Zhao and Qi neighboring states, and Qi will surely annex Zhao. If Zhao does rescue Wei, Qi will certainly be enraged, and in its wrath will attack Zhao, and Zhao is certain to fall. Zhao and Wei are like lips and teeth, mutually dependent—when the lips are gone, the teeth grow cold. I hope Your Majesty will consider this matter carefully." The King of Zhao thereupon abandoned his intention to rescue Wei.
💡 商战启示录
This stratagem is a classic demonstration of the "when the lips are gone, the teeth feel the cold" strategic thinking. Wei, adopting the posture of the weak, revealed to Zhao the chain reaction that failing to rescue Wei would lead to Qi's dominance and Zhao's own peril. In modern commercial warfare, this enlightens enterprises to identify strategic allies within the ecosystem and avoid short-sighted self-preservation. For instance, in the smartphone industry, in the early days Google nurtured the Android system to counter Apple—if various phone manufacturers had only pursued immediate gains without jointly maintaining the Android ecosystem, allowing Apple's iOS to monopolize, all of them would have been reduced to vassals. Huawei, Samsung, and others well understand this principle, cooperating on open-source systems and cross-licensing patents to form a collective defense. Conversely, if an enterprise stands idly by while a competitor is suppressed by a giant, believing it can reap the spoils without effort, it fails to realize that the giant's next step will be to encroach upon its own market. Just as in the fierce subsidy war between Didi and Kuaidi—had one side not united with the other, allowing foreign capital (such as Uber) to profit as the third party, both might have ended up gravely wounded. Wei cleverly exploited Zhao's anxiety over its own survival, transforming the act of rescue into an act of self-preservation—truly a paradigm of the "interest-binding" strategy in commerce: by clearly delineating the shared risks of non-cooperation, it impels allies to make decisions favorable to oneself, rather than merely begging for assistance.