束手无策

Origin and story

Bound hands provide the image of being unable to act, while ce refers to a plan or stratagem. An exact occurrence is found in the Song writer Wang Bai's afterword to a letter from his father to Wang Dushan. Looking back on the loss of Xiangyang and Fancheng, he laments that officials failed to consider such dangers in peaceful times and had no answer when crisis came.

This is a historical reflection on preparedness, not a story about someone's hands actually being tied. The idiom can describe either an individual or a group at a loss for a solution. It does not necessarily imply laziness or unwillingness.