I taught Dutch Disease in my political economy class. My Classical Chinese colleague heard about it and instantly recognised that’s ancient China philosopher Guan Zhong’s (700-645 BC) strategy to trick the neighbour state to abandon agriculture by stimulating non-agricultural demand in trade with them (衡山之謀). Guan Zhong’s thinking was physiocratic in an era of interstate rivalry which meant trade could be cut off and war was frequent. Prudent statesmen should prioritise agriculture and achieve self-sufficiency. I then searched whether Ancient Greece had parallel thinking and found none. After all, in Ancient Greece, free trade was the norm and exploiting your comparative advantage was natural/unavoidable just like 2000s. That may explain why Herodotus didn’t coin a term like “Corinth Disease” for exporting potteries. Similarly, Dutch Disease was problematicized in 1977 in @TheEconomist by the implicit assumption of “manufacturing primacy” in Cold War + Oil Crisis that comparative advantage in oil/gas is inferior to complex industries due to the former’s fortune was seen as temporary and a windfall. In 2014, The Economist further clarified that Dutch Disease was bad because commodity price fluctuates without caring supply chain security. This summer-kid globalist explanation lacked Guan Zhong’s deeper point that is rooted in statecraft: if you lose essential industries (agriculture for 650 BC, manufacturing for 2020 AD), your survival is at stake. As we enter an era of deglobalization and reindustrialization, we may want to revise the Dutch Disease’s meaning in the light of Guan Zhong.