this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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In terms of individuality and becoming emperor of all of China, perhaps. He had a surprising number of really competent aides and generals, when compared to Cao Cao and Liu Bei. He was the kind of leader that was much more of a skilled manager of capable talent than a director who knew exactly what commands to give. In the long term, tho, this admittedly lead to politicking and infighting that cause Eastern Wu to rollover and die.
Also, it's worth considering that he was also arguably the most important of the three for their legacy. The Southeastern part of China is incredibly important /influencial in later chinese history, from Tang to Song to Ming and all the way to today, and Sun Quan had the unenviable task of fully absorbing the distinct jiangnan and southern chinese customs and idiosyncrasies into what we nowadays think of as chinese culture.
That's an interesting take on it! It's true Sun Quan had cultivated some good generals. Heck, Wu was the last of the 3 standing so I guess that counts for something.
Another big lesson I got out of the era was that the skills to build an empire are very different from the skills to run it. So an empire built by a great hero, can easily be mismanaged by the same hero. Then, when an empire is passed on through heredity, there is no guarantee that the new leader possesses either set of skills. This seems to be one of the major ways that empires fall apart.
I work with some large family-run Chinese companies. There were ones with a certain flavor of weak leadership which really confused me before I looked at it this way. Now I'm better aware of why this happens, the time scale and method of the resulting descent into chaos, and how to convince and maneuver my employers to profit from it. Similar things come up sometimes in Vietnam too, but somehow I never really connected the dots before.
Also apparently eunuchs ruin everything. I feel that there's a more modern analogy, maybe people who play politics for personal gain inside companies instead of through the merit of their own work? Can't quite put my finger on it.