📖 Meaning
Those who share common interests will risk their lives to help one another. It describes how shared benefit fosters deep mutual loyalty and willingness to sacrifice. The idiom reflects an ancient understanding that common stakes forge the strongest bonds.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom expresses an ancient Chinese political and military principle about alliances bound by shared interests. Such ideas appear throughout classical strategic writings, where rulers and commanders were advised that men united by common gain will fight and die for each other. It echoes themes found in works like the Guanzi and Sun Bin's Art of War, which stressed that mutual benefit is the foundation of steadfast loyalty. No single canonical anecdote is attached to it; rather it distills a recurring maxim of statecraft.
💡 Example Usage
商业伙伴之间同利相死，才能在激烈竞争中立于不败之地。
Only when business partners are willing to risk everything for their shared interests can they remain invincible in fierce competition.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 同利相死
- Pinyin: tóng lì xiāng sǐ
- Literal Translation: same, benefit, mutually, die
- Category: Morality
- Characters: 4