Kill the chicken to scare the monkey (traditional Chinese: 殺雞儆猴; simplified Chinese: 杀鸡儆猴; pinyin: Shājījǐnghóu; Wade–Giles: Sha-chi-ching-hou, lit.
kill chicken scare monkey) is an old Chinese idiom.
[1] According to an old folktale, a street entertainer earned a lot of money with his dancing monkey.
[1] A historical anecdote relates that, at the beginning of the Zhou dynasty, Jiāng Zǐyá was asked by his king to find him an adviser.
Jiāng Zǐyá asked a scholar who lived on a mountaintop.