Regardless the Dongfeng, I think you should read Sun Tzu's teaching in a whole package, he said a lot others too. This is the best he wished, but he also said a lot about physically back up the threat. And Sun Tzu is far from the only and not even necessarily the greatest strategist of China. Don't treat him as a God. Chinese don't at least.
In reality, most "greatest" wars of China were some of the bloodiest in the human history. Majority of the Chinese generals rely on brute force while trying and hoping to reach what Sun Tzu envisioned as the best achievement (victory without battle).
And personally I believe the idea of victory without battle is like utopia, good to have and try, but never possible because human nature is that nobody will give up until he hit the wall with his head, that makes a battle of brute force always necessary.
I quote this post from another sub-forum because this post give me a tickle to start this post.
So who was Sun Tzu? As far as I know, he was a general from a kingdom called Wu (in the Spring and Autumn era). His biggest performance was to help his kingdom to capture the biggest kingdom at that era, Chu. But only for some time. Because then, the Chu King was able to repel the invader.
But then if Sun Tzu was truly a strategist / General of Wu at that era, and he was a truly military genius at that time, then why the Wu kingdom was destroyed sometime later by a kingdom called Yan?
So let us discuss this