"A snake swallowing an elephant" — Phrase of the Week
Has Anta Group bitten off more than it can chew?
Our phrase of the week is: “a snake swallowing an elephant” (蛇吞象 shé tūn xiàng)
Context
China’s Anta Group (安踏集团) announced on January 27, that it would acquire a 29.06% stake in German athletic brand Puma SE for €1.5 billion ($1.8 billion). The transaction makes Anta the largest shareholder in Puma.
In China, industry analysts have mixed views about the deal.
Some see the Anta-Puma pairing is seen as strategically complementary. Geographically Puma is strong in Europe and Latin America but weak in China and North America, where Anta has deep operational experience and distribution networks. Puma is also strong in some product categories where Anta has gaps, like football (soccer), motorsports, running, and basketball.
Some investors are also concerned that Anta has taken on too much risk by financing the deal from its own cash reserves, using a colourful Chinese phrase to make the point:
With an acquisition price tag exceeding 10 billion RMB, the market is closely scrutinizing Anta’s financial health.
After all, the 2019 deal where an Anta-led consortium acquired Amer Sports for approximately €4.66 billion was widely characterized as “a snake swallowing an elephant.”
斥资超百亿进行收购，市场非常关切安踏的财务健康状况。毕竟，2019年安踏牵头财团对亚玛芬体育约46.6亿欧元的收购，就曾被外界形容为一笔“蛇吞象”交易。
And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.
What it means
“A snake swallowing an elephant” (蛇吞象) is a three-character idiom.
The phrase originates from the Classic of Mountains and Seas (山海经), an ancient Chinese text of mythical geography compiled around the 4th century BC. The authorship is unknown, though it’s believed to have been compiled by multiple authors over several centuries, with contributions attributed to the mythical emperor Yu the Great (大禹).
The original passage is from Classic of Mountains and Seas reads:
“The Ba serpent devoured an elephant, and only after three years did it spit out the bones.”
巴蛇食象，三岁而出其骨
The Ba Serpent (巴蛇) is a mythical being that inhabited the waters of southwest China and was said to be so enormous it could swallow elephants whole, digesting them over the course of years.
Over time, the phrase evolved from describing a supernatural creature into a cautionary idiom about human behavior. By the Ming Dynasty, it had crystallized into the popular saying:
“The human heart is never satisfied, like a snake trying to swallow an elephant.”
人心不足蛇吞象
The phrase was popularised by Ming Dynasty scholar, Luo Hongxian (羅洪先), in his poem Awakening Song (醒世歌). It refers to how greed and ambition can drive people to reach for far more than they can reasonably handle, often leading to their downfall.
Today, the three-character phrase can carry two meanings: the first is “insatiable greed”, like someone whose desires exceed all reasonable bounds. Or more commonly in business contexts, it can mean “a minnow that swallows a whale” or “biting off more than you can chew” — an ambitious but potentially reckless undertaking where a smaller entity attempts to acquire or control something far larger.
When observers labeled Anta’s 2019 acquisition of Amer Sports as a “snake swallowing an elephant” they were questioning whether Anta had the management capacity, international experience, and operational sophistication to successfully absorb and operate a portfolio of premium Western outdoor brands.
The skeptics were proved wrong. Anta’s disciplined approach to brand management, particularly with Arc’teryx, has made the Amer Sports deal a case study in successful cross-border M&A. The “snake” not only swallowed the “elephant” – it thrived on it.
Now, with the €1.5 billion euro Puma stake, even though Anta is now much larger and more experienced, some observers are asking the same question: Has Anta bitten off more than it can chew?
Andrew Methven is the author of RealTime Mandarin, a resource which helps you bridge the gap to real-world fluency in Mandarin, stay informed about China, and communicate with confidence—all through weekly immersion in real news. Subscribe for free here.
