Classic Form: A tiger is invincible in its mountain habitat but vulnerable on the open plains. The stratagem is to entice the enemy away from their position of strength into a less advantageous location where they can be easily isolated and defeated.
Modern Version: Pull a powerful opponent into your own controlled environment—be it your legal system, your technology ecosystem, or your sphere of geopolitical influence—where the rules are stacked in your favor and their natural advantages are neutralized.
AI-Powered Execution: An AI system can create a highly convincing but entirely fabricated opportunity—a "digital mountain pass"—designed to be irresistible to a specific target. Using redirection relevance models originally designed for hyper-targeted advertising, the AI can tailor the bait (a lucrative market opportunity, a breakthrough research partnership, a diplomatic opening) to a specific corporate or political entity. This lures them into a deal, a platform, or a market where their legal protections are weak, their data is exposed, and the entire rule-set is controlled by the adversary.
CCP Application: The CCP waves the irresistible lure of access to its 1.4 billion consumer market to Western corporations. Companies like Tesla are offered majority ownership of factories—an unprecedented concession—luring them deep into the Chinese system. Once they are heavily invested and dependent on the Chinese market and supply chains, the CCP can change the rules, demand technology transfer, and use the company's presence to its own strategic advantage. The tiger (the Western corporation) has been lured from its mountain (a transparent, rule-of-law-based market) onto the CCP's plains (an opaque, politically controlled market).
Collaborators: Corporate boards and Wall Street investors who are obsessed with the short-term gains of the China market and willfully ignore the long-term strategic risks. Prominent Western business leaders who praise the CCP's "efficiency" and "kindness," providing intellectual cover for others to walk into the trap.
Counter: Do not go. The most effective counter is to refuse to be lured. Build and invest in alternative markets and resilient domestic systems. Recognize that any deal that seems too good to be true is the bait for a trap. The tiger survives by remaining on its mountain.