📖 Meaning
A military strategy in which forces advance from several directions simultaneously to converge on and attack the same target. It describes a coordinated multi-pronged offensive that surrounds and overwhelms an enemy through converging assaults.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom appears in Mao Zedong's 1936 work 'On Strategic Problems of China's Revolutionary War,' Chapter 5, Section 6. Mao described how enemy forces employed the tactic of divided advance and converging attack against the Red Army at the strategic level. He proposed turning this against the enemy by applying the same tactic at the campaign or battle level. The phrase subsequently became a standard term in Chinese military discourse for coordinated multi-directional assaults.
💡 Example Usage
敌军采取分进合击的战术，企图一举围歼我军主力。
The enemy adopted a divide-and-converge strategy, attempting to encircle and annihilate our main force in a single stroke.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 分进合击
- Pinyin: fēn jìn hé jī
- Literal Translation: divide, advance, combine, strike
- Category: Method
- Characters: 4