Rhetoric to the single person audience developped special features.
(Hui Wu 2016, Preface to Guiguzi, etc., p. 12)

The Chinese rhetors were not public speakers but persuaders primarily in a private setting, most often talking to a one-person audience, often assumed to be the ruler or a superior. (id.)

Guiguzi, China’s first treatise on Rhetoric. A critical translation and commentary.
Translated by Hui Wu. With commentaries by Hui Wu and C. Jan Swearingen. Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press. 2016.

« Warring states period » or « a first-millenium forgery »? —  A critical note on the preface
Was the book written by one author during the Warring States period (5th–3rd century BCE), or is it a forgery by various authors from the 1st millennium CE?
The issue is not simply a a scholarly dispute. The translator’s preface is entirely based on the hypothesis that « Guiguzi » lived during the Warring States period. If the reviewer is correct, then key passages of this preface, as well as the general perspective taken on Chinese rhetoric, are irrelevant.

A. S., a reviewer:
Can’t imagine how the introduction got past peer review

The translator supposes that this book is written by a wise old man named Guiguzi, who lived in the Warring States period […]
Many scholars suspect that the whole thing is a first-millennium forgery retroactively attributed to a shadowy master with a commensurately shadowy name (Master of the Valley of Ghosts). […]
Address: https://www.desertcart.sc/products/118771091-guiguzi-chinas-first-treatise-on-rhetoric-a-critical-translation-commentary