Written 2,500 years ago by Chinese General Sun Tzu , The Art of War is a poetic and potent treatise on military strategy still in use in war colleges around the world. It has been the most famous and influential of China's Seven Military Classics, and for the last two thousand years it remained the most important military treatise in Asia, where even the common people knew it by name. It has had an influence on Eastern and Western military thinking, business tactics, legal strategy and beyond.