The chapter opens with the most quoted piece of practical advice in the book. Governing a large state is like cooking a small fish.
Nothing in the sentence explains itself, and the explanation is not in the text. What makes it work is that anyone who has cooked one knows: a small fish falls apart if it is turned, poked or fussed with, and the technique consists almost entirely of leaving it alone over the right heat. The analogy carries the whole of the book's political doctrine in one domestic image, and it carries it to a reader who has never encountered the word non-action.
Two details of the comparison are doing work. The fish is small and the state is large, so the analogy runs against scale rather than with it, which denies that a bigger problem needs more handling. And cooking is an activity. The sentence does not say that governing a large state is like leaving a fish in a bucket; there is heat, there is timing, and there is a result somebody is responsible for.
The line had a long career as counsel to rulers and was quoted in Chinese political writing for centuries, usually as an argument against frequent changes of law and personnel. It survives in English as a proverb about not meddling, often with the source forgotten.
It is also the clearest example of the book's preferred method of instruction. A principle stated abstractly invites disagreement. An image from the kitchen, offered without commentary, is either recognised or not.