“The Chinese nation was one of the first in the world to develop [and] utilize marine resources [in the eighth century B.C.]. . . . Establishing a Chinese maritime strategy has become a task of top importance [as we look] to the seas for our future survival space.”
—Yan Youqiang and Chen Rongxing, “On Maritime Strategy and the Marine Environment,” Beijing Zhongguo Junshi Kexue [China Military Science] 2 (20 May 1997): 81–92, in FBIS-CHI-97-19.
IN DEVELOPING THE NECESSARY CONTEXT for a discussion of China’s future nuclear submarine force, this chapter addresses the current state of development of a maritime strategy in China, a strategy that draws on Chinese, Russian, and other Western concepts of sea power. China’s record as a naval power during the long period of empire and republic focused on continental rather than maritime concerns. It suffered disastrously from its lack of naval power during the “One Hundred Years of Humiliation” in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Great Britain, the United States, and Japan dominated much of revolutionary China with relatively small military forces, by using sea and river transport to penetrate China’s vast interior, moving troops rapidly from one crisis area to another.1 The pre-1949 Republic of China government had no effective maritime strategy, since its security threats came from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and internal warlords.
The new CCP government in 1949 believed its coastline and island territories were threatened by both the United States and the Kuomintang (KMT) regime on Taiwan. Mao Zedong obtained Soviet military assistance during his 1949–50 visit to Moscow, including naval equipment and advisers.
The Russian advisers may not have consciously applied a maritime strategic theory to their task in 1950, but their background would have been the Soviet “Young School,” focusing on coastal defense by a navy of small surface craft and submarines. The Young School of maritime strategy had developed in the Soviet Union shortly after World War I, based on the conditions in post-revolutionary Russia:
1. a new regime under military and political attack by several capitalist countries, with still unsuppressed domestic fighting;
2. a regime that expected to be besieged and attacked by capitalist nations, including amphibious attack, especially from “the ultimate bastion of imperialism, the United States”;2
3. a navy in disarray and manned by captured/defecting enemy personnel;
4. severe budgetary shortages;
5. lack of an industrial infrastructure to produce modern naval armaments; and
6. a maritime frontier hemmed in by adversarial fleets and bases.
These conditions seemed also to apply to 1949 China, as did an absence of a modern maritime tradition.
The initial group of approximately five hundred Soviet naval advisors grew to between fifteen hundred and two thousand by 1953, and was assigned throughout the Chinese chain-of-command from Beijing headquarters to individual ships and squadrons. Furthermore, “large numbers” of Chinese officers, including the new head of the PLAN, were sent to study in the Soviet Union.3
Although its maritime strategy in the early 1950s was defensive, Beijing worked to develop the capability needed to recover the many offshore islands still occupied by the KMT, as part of a campaign designed to culminate in the August 1950 invasion of Taiwan.4 This plan was frustrated by the beginning of the Korean War and President Truman’s dispatch of the Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait in June.
The mixed lessons of the Korean War did nothing to change Beijing’s belief that an amphibious invasion remained a threat and would best be countered by short-range defensive sea forces; no ocean-going navy was planned during the 1950s. Mao Zedong cited the need for “a strong navy for the purposes of fighting against imperialist aggression” when the Korean War ended, and in December 1953 assigned the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) three missions: (1) eliminate Guomindang (GMD) naval interference and ensure safe navigation; (2) prepare to recover Taiwan; and (3) oppose aggression from the sea.5 China also began planning for a sea-based nuclear deterrent during the latter part of the decade, although PLAN modernization was limited by continued Maoist belief in “people’s war,” constrained resources, and a planning horizon defined by a brown-water defensive strategy.
The 1960s were marked by major foreign and domestic events that further limited Chinese interest in developing a seagoing navy. Most important was the 1960 split with the Soviet Union, when Khrushchev withdrew Soviet advisors (and their plans) from China.
Mao’s concept of People’s War remained the guidance for the navy during this decade and a half, modified by some significant naval developments. The operational implications of the strategic situation—with the Soviet Union posing a maritime threat—contributed to a national commitment of resources to the development of nuclear-powered attack and ballistic-missile submarines.6
As the 1970s progressed, PLAN missions seemed still to reflect Young School thinking: assistance to the army; offshore patrol against criminal activities such as smuggling, piracy, and illegal immigration; and lifesaving and safety of navigation.
Meanwhile, the Soviet navy in the 1960s and 1970s underwent dramatic changes under the leadership of Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, partly as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis’s glaring demonstration of Soviet maritime weakness. Under Gorshkov’s guidance, the Soviets built a large fleet with ambitious wartime missions:
1. defend offshore areas;
2. counter an adversary’s strategic strike systems;
3. control sea in fleet ballistic-missile (FBM) submarine operating areas;
4. launch strategic nuclear strike;
5. disrupt an adversary’s sea lines of communications (SLOCs); and
6. protect friendly SLOCs.
Gorshkov’s maritime strategy also included specific peacetime tasks:
1. show the flag;
2. gain international respect;
3. support economic interests;
4. manage crises;
5. limit an adversary’s options;
6. exercise local sea control; and
7. use in local wars.7
Gorshkov’s vision and strategic plans may well be influencing China’s current naval modernization.
A revolution similar in kind if not in scale to that in the post-1962 Soviet Union has been taking place in China since the mid-1990s, with the U.S. naval intervention in the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis analogous to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Maritime strategic thought has been reinvigorated, as PLAN planners are now extending naval power beyond China’s coastal arena.
Beijing’s revitalized maritime strategy is also based on the coastal concentration of China’s burgeoning economy and many military facilities, and is marked by significant growth above and beyond the basic mission of coastal defense as the navy’s strategy. Significantly, the resources necessary for modernizing the PLAN have become available with China’s dramatic economic development and increasing wealth.
An important influence on China’s current maritime strategy is General Liu Huaqing, commander of the PLAN from 1982 to 1987 and then Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission until 1997. Liu observed that “the strategic position of the Pacific is becoming more important [and] as China is gradually expanding the scale of its maritime development, the Chinese Navy will have to shoulder more and heavier tasks in both peacetime and war.”8 He argued that “the scope of sea warfare operations has extended from the limited space of air, the surface, the water, and coasts, to all space from under the sea to outer space and from the sea inland. . . . In order to safeguard China’s coast, resist possible foreign invasion, and defend our maritime rights and interests, it is only right and proper that China should attach great importance to developing its own navy, including ‘emphatic’ development of its submarine force.”9
Liu directed the PLAN’s Naval Research College in 1982 to develop a strategy of “offshore defense.”10 The definition of “offshore” in this construct is imprecise, with estimates ranging from two hundred kilometers to two hundred–six hundred nautical miles, but he probably meant the area from China’s coast seaward to the “First Island Chain,” defined by the Kurile Islands, Japan, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, the Philippines, Borneo, and Natuna Besar.11 This area includes the Yellow Sea, facing Korea and Japan; the western East China Sea, including Taiwan; and the South China Sea (SCS).12
This strategy stipulated: (1) stubborn defense near the shore; (2) mobile warfare at sea; and (3) surprise guerrilla-like attacks at sea.13 Executing these missions would require significant national resources for naval forces, especially since Liu’s maritime ambitions envisioned a PLAN composed of multi-ship task groups supported by integral logistics forces.
Liu’s definition of maritime strategic theaters by fixed geographic boundaries reveals a strong continentalist perspective, and is contrary to the argument of Western maritime strategists that while the soldier thinks of terrain and theaters, the sailor of necessity thinks in wider terms, outside immediate physical limits—there is no “terrain” at sea.14 His framework should not be dismissed out-of-hand, however, although it may reflect his early Soviet training and the continuing influence of Russian naval strategy.
By the mid-1980s, Soviet naval strategy included a division of Russian waters out to about two thousand nautical miles from the coast into defense zones. The Soviet’s innermost zone was called the “area of sea control”; the second was the “area of sea denial”; the third was a broad region for long-range reconnaissance and submarine interdiction. Liu Huaqing’s delineation of island chains almost certainly owes its origin to these “zones,” the first and second of which extended seaward two thousand kilometers, closely matching Liu’s lines, the second of which lies eighteen hundred to two thousand kilometers from China’s coast. In addition to championing a national maritime strategy, Liu reorganized the navy, gave new life to the marine corps, upgraded bases and research and development facilities, and restructured the navy’s school system.15
Most significantly, Liu’s strategy provided rationale and direction for continued PLAN modernization. It described control of vast oceanic expanses as a vital national interest; an ambition perhaps unattainable in the face of continued U.S. and Japanese naval presence, but effective within the PLA in obtaining significantly greater resources for naval modernization and securing national command authority belief in the value of strong maritime power.
Liu emphasized naval missions well to seaward of the coastal zone that had formed the basis for past PRC maritime thinking.16 PLAN modernization depends on a well-articulated offshore mission, envisioning China’s capability as the strongest maritime power in East Asia. A direct line may be drawn from Sergei Gorshkov to Liu Huaqing: indeed, the former was an instructor at the Voroshilov Naval Academy in Leningrad when the latter was a student at the school.17
The PLAN in 2005 has not been tasked with all of the 1970s Soviet maritime strategic objectives. It has no “FBM operating areas” to control, for instance, and its “strategic nuclear strike” capability is almost nonexistent—but both of these missions will be applicable with the deploying of new (Type 094) ballistic-missile submarines. It has already adopted peacetime strategic missions almost identical to those outlined by Gorshkov—who cited the American threat as his basic justification for a strong navy. Writing in 1975, he accused the United States of following an “oceanic strategy” of aggression against the Soviet Union;18 Chinese strategists today use similar words.
Current PLAN modernization follows the “sea change” in national strategic thinking that occurred in 1985, when Beijing’s expectations of global nuclear war or large-scale conflict with the Soviet Union gave way to a focus on small, local wars on China’s periphery. The local, limited wars envisioned include (1) small-scale conflicts in disputed border areas; (2) conflicts over disputed islands or ocean areas; (3) surprise air attacks; (4) deliberate incursions into China; and (5) counterattacks by China against an aggressor or “to uphold justice and dispel threats.”19
This poses an important shift for Chinese maritime strategic thought. First, the PLAN has moved from a general strategy of coastal defense to one of offshore defense. Second, it has moved the navy from army acolyte to lead service in certain operational scenarios, including challenges over sovereignty claims and maritime interests from Taiwan, Japan, the United States, India, and Southeast Asian nations.
The classic maritime strategic concept in Western thought is “command of the sea,” most simply defined as the ability to use the sea while denying its use to an adversary. “Sea control” is a lesser but nonetheless powerful concept, defined as a nation’s ability to control the events over a discrete ocean area; i.e., both friendly and opposing forces are able to operate, but within bounds favorable to one’s own side. Finally, “sea denial” refers to denying an opponent the use of a discrete ocean area for a period of time necessary to achieve a specific strategic goal.
Achieving any of these objectives requires strong naval surface forces, but may also be achieved through mastery of the air-space continuum and/ or the subsurface space relative to the maritime area in issue. Sea denial in littoral waters is a particularly attractive and inexpensive option for even a small naval power, if it has access to mines, missiles, submarines, and shore-based aircraft in sufficient numbers and capability—as does China.20
The PLAN is continuing to acquire modern, capable platforms on, above, and under the ocean surface, but several other advances contribute even more significantly to Beijing’s accrual of maritime power during the past decade. These include:
1. the complete overhaul of training and education programs, one result of which is improved professionalization of the officer corps and an improving noncommissioned officer corps;
2. the accession of modern naval systems and platforms costs, capabilities, and sustainability;
3. the expansion of a national scientific and industrial infrastructure for research, development, and production of naval warfare technology and systems, including increasing tie-ins to civilian enterprises;
4. a focus on developing and exercising doctrine and tactics for specific strategic objectives;
5. the ability to administer, operate, and command and control tactical units beyond individual ships;
6. improved C4ISR, with an emphasis on state-of-the-art technology and the utilization of space;
7. recognition at senior civilian and military leadership levels of the advantages to be gained from maritime power.21
In the October 1992 Fourteenth Party Congress political report, General Secretary Jiang Zemin described the PLA’s mission as defending “the unity, territorial integrity, and maritime rights and interests of the homeland.” He later instructed the PLAN “to safeguard the sovereignty of China’s territorial waters, uphold the country’s unity and social stability and create a safe and stable environment for the nation’s economic development.”22 The navy’s first priority is defense of China’s long sea frontier stretching from Korea to the Indochinese Peninsula, a great maritime sweep marked by major offshore island chains from Japan to the Malacca Strait.
The PLAN aspires to play a central national security role, as described by PLAN vice-chief, Vice Admiral Cheng Mingshang, who argued in 1991 that the navy is “the tool of the state’s foreign policy . . . an international navy can project its presence far away from home. It can even appear at the sea close to the coastal lines of the target countries. . . . This has made the navy the most active strategic force in peacetime, a pillar for the country’s foreign policy and the embodiment of the country’s will and power.”23 Economic justification for a strong Chinese navy rests on the concentration of modern economic interests and growth in the special development zones clustered along China’s seaboard.24 Seabed minerals are also important, especially potential petroleum deposits in the ECS and SCS.25
Jiang Zemin in 1995 described China as “a continental power, and a coastal power as well.” He emphasized the coastal region’s “dense population, with its scientific, technological, and economic levels,” noting that “the ocean as a natural protective screen covers this region of strategic significance. . . . We can be sure that the development and utilization of the ocean will be of increasingly greater significance to China’s long range development . . . we must see the ocean from a strategic plane, and . . . set out new and higher requirements on navy building. We must . . . step up the pace of navy modernization to meet the requirements of future wars.”26
China’s maritime petroleum disputes with Japan have drawn more media attention, but fisheries disputes are an equally troublesome issue with both that country and with South Korea. Negotiations so far have established only temporary measures for resolving fisheries disputes and none for disputed petroleum deposits.27
China claims the Diaoyu, also claimed by Japan as the Senkaku Islands.28 These five small islands and three rocky outcroppings lie 90 nautical miles northeast of Taiwan and 220 nautical miles west-southwest of Okinawa. They were considered to be Chinese, based on a fourteenth-century claim, until acquired by Japan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki following its victorious war with China in 1895. The Senkakus remained with Japan when the allied powers returned Taiwan to China in 1945.
The islands are uninhabited and have no intrinsic value, except as a symbol of national pride. They lie on China’s continental shelf, but the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) parameters do not support that necessarily as determining ownership. In fact, a 1968 UN study suggesting the presence of petroleum reserves stimulated the present dispute.29 Tokyo argues that the two nations’ overlapping exclusive economic zones (EEZs) should be divided midway between Japan and China, while Beijing’s position is that any mineral deposits on China’s continental shelf are Chinese.
PLAN ships continue steaming in the disputed area around the Senkakus; in September 2005, a Chinese task force of five ships loitered in the area.30 This is probably part of a deliberate Beijing policy similar to the American Freedom of Navigation (FON) program, under which U.S. ships deliberately transit seas claimed as sovereign by nations whose claims the United States disputes. The Chinese incursions are increasing and the potential for confrontation is increasing between one of Beijing’s incursions and a Japanese ship or aircraft, which routinely respond to them.31
This relatively small body of water holds important economic, political, and nationalistic strategic implications. These include rich fisheries; possible large petroleum, natural gas, and manganese deposits; vital sea lines of communication (SLOCs); and the issue of national pride.32
China, Taiwan, and Vietnam claim all of the Paracel and the Spratly Islands, while Malaysia and the Philippines claim several of the islands. Brunei in 1984 established an “exclusive fishing zone” that includes Louisa Reef in the southern Spratlys, but has not officially claimed that bit of land. Indonesia does not claim any of the Spratlys, but the rich oil and natural-gas fields surrounding its Natuna Islands extend into the area of the South China Sea (SCS) claimed by China; hence, it is a very concerned participant in the region’s territorial disputes.
The National People’s Congress passed the Law of the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zones in February 1992, which implies that the entire SCS is sovereign Chinese territory, water as well as land areas.33
The PLAN has limited resources for projecting sustained power throughout the South China Sea and China will likely continue its present, dual strategic approach in the area. First, it is pursuing discussions to resolve conflicting claims.34 In the 2001 Code of Conduct signed by the claimant countries, Beijing agreed to peaceful efforts to exploit South China Sea resources. Then, in January 2005, China and the Philippines signed an agreement, soon joined by Vietnam, in which they agreed to pursue joint exploration of possible petroleum reserves.
Second, however, Beijing has established a military presence on disputed islands and other land features by building facilities ranging from navigation markers to structures capable of housing personnel and berthing small ships.35 Despite its diplomatic moves, Beijing consistently phrases its maritime claims in categorical terms.36 Additionally, China uses “straight baselines” to demarcate its claims along its coastline and the Paracels, a method contrary to the 1982 UNCLOS.37
The South China Sea is the route for more than one-half of the world’s total merchant shipping; over three times as many ships pass through the Malacca Strait as pass through the Suez Canal, and more than five times as many as pass through the Panama Canal.
This traffic, half of which passes near the Spratly Islands, is dominated by raw materials, particularly petroleum products. Nearly two-thirds of the tonnage transiting the Malacca Strait and half of that passing near the Spratlys is crude oil from the Middle East. Two-thirds of the world’s total liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments pass through the South China Sea.38
Taiwan is the primary focus of Beijing’s offshore strategic concerns, and despite possible U.S. intervention China refuses to renounce the use of military force to ensure the island’s reunification. Beijing must count on the PLAN for policy options ranging from intimidation to outright invasion.39 Chinese planners are almost certainly concentrating their efforts on devising a strategic paradigm under which the navy would be able to secure its objectives despite or before the United States could intervene. Such plans probably include a full range of operational options, from full-scale amphibious assault to decapitating Taiwan’s leadership, but seem to be focusing on a deployed submarine force in the East China Sea, both to isolate Taiwan and to slow American naval intervention until Taipei yields to Beijing’s pressure.
Additionally, China is already using the threat of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles to restrict Taipei’s policy options and deter Taiwan’s leaders.
Ships carry between 85 and 90 percent of China’s trade. Continued development of China’s economy into the twenty-first century depends on reliable sources of electrical power from fossil fuel. The nation currently imports up to 40 percent of its annual petroleum requirements, an amount sure to grow.40 This imported petroleum, most from the Middle East, arrives over sea lanes that pass through the Indian Ocean, as well as the South and East China Seas. These routes include several geographic “choke points,” including the Luzon and Taiwan Straits, the Strait of Malacca, and the Straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb.
China can project almost no naval control over these choke points, except for the Taiwan narrows, and Beijing is very concerned with their potential as strategic buttons the United States might push in the event of a conflict. President Hu Jintao has specifically discussed “China’s Malacca dilemma” in this respect,41 and we must assume that PLAN leaders have improved SLOC defense capabilities high on their priority list. Beijing believes a strong PLAN is vital to resolving all these (and many other) issues of national security concern.
Chinese strategic concern about India includes that nation’s propinquity to the Indian Ocean SLOCs over which so much of China’s imported petroleum flows. Beijing must also be concerned about India’s campaign for an increased economic and naval presence east of Malacca, with an increased role in decisions affecting the South China Sea.42
China appears to be establishing a maritime security presence in Burma and nearby waters. The two nations have announced a “framework of future bilateral relations and cooperation,” and economic and military relations are expanding. A rationale for a PLAN presence in these areas would position Beijing to influence the vital SLOCs through the Malacca Straits and into the Indian Ocean. China and Burma have during the past decade and a half established a close relationship. This includes military cooperation, trade and Chinese investment programs, and Beijing’s political support for the isolated Rangoon regime. Indeed, despite Burma’s rather tenuous membership in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China is that country’s only significant friend.
India finds this presence very disquieting, despite recent joint statements to “resolve to maintain peace along [their] borders.”43 Even more disturbing to New Delhi is China’s close relationship with Pakistan. Beijing makes no secret of its military and economic support for India’s most obdurate enemy, support that includes China’s major role in expanding the Pakistani harbor at Gwadar into a major port facility.
Achieving the reputed completion of Liu Huaqing’s strategic paradigm—global maritime power—would require China’s leaders to alter allocation of national resources to build a very large navy during the next fifty years. This maritime strategic objective, if distant in accomplishment, or even chimerical, may still serve the PLAN in domestic budget battles.44
The PLAN does seem to be pursuing objectives described by its 1999 commander, Admiral Shi Yunsheng:
1. an “‘offshore defense’ strategy”;
2. “making the navy strong with science and technology, narrowing the gap between it and other military powers”;45
3. “more advanced weapons,” including “warships, submarines, fighters, missiles, torpedoes, guns, and electronic equipment”; and
4. trained personnel and “more qualified people.”46
Although this construct omits logistics or the ability to keep a fleet at sea for the extended period of time necessary to power projection,47 significant advances are being made in improving the shore- and sea-based infrastructure necessary to support PLAN operations. China’s booming economy has allowed the national government to devote increased resources to military modernization, and the PLAN continues to benefit from this development.
Composition of the nascent Chinese navy seems still gauged to East Asian security concerns, but it would not be wise to conclude that Beijing will not allocate the resources necessary to deploy an inter-regional navy once the Taiwan issue is resolved in its favor. Immediate indicators of expanded strategic missions for the PLAN include significant increases in distant logistics support capability, the development of air-capable ships (beyond the current two-helicopter-per-ship limit), or the expanded use of nuclear power for submarines and perhaps for surface combatants. Current fleet composition and expansion efforts include an increase in such power plants—the Types 093 and 094 submarines—but appear to form a small part of China’s fleet ambitions.
China faces five major maritime security situations in Asia: Taiwan, Japan, the South China Sea, India, and its SLOCs. The American naval presence overlies all of these. Maritime strategists in Beijing are reminded of their navy’s shortcomings every day the U.S. Navy deploys across East Asia—a fact that helps fuel the current campaign to modernize the PLAN.
China’s naval strategy long reflected influence from the Soviet “Young School.” Since the mid-1990s however, Beijing has realized the inadequacy of this paradigm for a PLAN offering China’s leaders a flexible, ready instrument of national security. Instead, the emerging maritime strategy reflects elements of Julian Corbett and Alfred Thayer Mahan’s theories. The former’s emphasis on using naval power to support achieving continental objectives seems to apply to Chinese concerns about island sovereignty issues, as does his concept of “sea control,” which is more limited than Mahan’s “command of the sea.” But the latter’s vision of naval power as a primary instrument of national security strategy is increasingly applicable to Beijing’s security concerns. This also subsumes Mahan’s characterization of seaborne trade as an important part of national power, a category in which China excels.
China’s maritime strategy is codified as “offshore defense,” which has clear offensive implications. Beijing is moving its strategic line seaward from the coast, demonstrating that the navy has an increasingly visible role in China’s twenty-first-century national-security goals. Insofar as the PLAN is concerned, a strategy of offshore defense includes:
1. preparing for operations against Taiwan;
2. defending Chinese claims in the East and South China Seas;
3. maintaining a strategic deterrent force against the United States (and possibly India and Russia);
4. protecting vital SLOCs—some lying a great distance from China;48 and
5. serving as a diplomatic force.49
Beijing’s naval development seeks to take advantage of both modern technology and Maoist doctrine, as in “the use of strategy can reverse the balance of combat strength.”50 In Beijing’s view, the ideal maritime strategy must overcome shortcomings in doctrine, equipment, and training.51
The PLAN remains a long way from achieving naval dominance in East Asia, even apart from the U.S. maritime presence. The Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) is certainly superior to the PLAN, and the Republic of Korea Navy (ROKN) would be a very difficult opponent. Even the Taiwan navy would not be a pushover for the PLAN. Clearly, a wise maritime strategist in Beijing would not, in the event of conflict, pose the PLAN “one-on-one” against any of these modern naval forces.
China’s navy would require a more thoughtful strategy if opposed by any of these navies, especially the USN. One likely strategic step in a maritime conflict would be to gain the initiative through preemption. This might involve a “bolt from the blue,”52 but also might be achieved by launching operations when an adversary’s naval forces are weak, due to out-of-area commitments.
Chinese strategists have described the seas as “a protective screen,” but also as “a marine invasion route,” and have emphasized the “priority . . . of maritime strategic competition”:
Military control of the seas means achieving and defending national unification, defending national maritime territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, protecting legitimate maritime economic activities and scientific research, and ensuring a peaceful and stable climate for national reform, opening, and coastal economic development, by dealing with possible maritime incidents, armed conflicts, and local wars . . . our Navy has an inescapable mission. . . . The 21st century is going to a maritime one . . . we will have to make our maritime strategy a key part.53
The PLAN must be able to utilize East Asian seas if Beijing’s strategic aims are to be secured in that region; however, China faces significant hurdles in the technological and industrial infrastructure and resource availability needed to deploy a regionally dominant navy. Beijing’s maritime strategy for the new century includes:
1. establishing a genuine maritime nuclear deterrent force at sea;
2. maintaining a naval presence throughout East Asia;
3. joint capability for specific objectives, including credible power-projection capability with the amphibious and logistics support to take and hold disputed territory in the East and South China Seas;
4. SLOC defense at least to the Tsushima Strait in the north, the Malacca Strait in the south, and the Marianas in the east; and
5. prevailing in Taiwan scenarios (which will dominate maritime strategic planning).
In the near term, Beijing is building a navy capable of decisively influencing the operational aspects of the Taiwan and South China Sea situations, should diplomacy and other instruments of statecraft fail. The first phase of Liu Huaqing’s reported strategy—to control China’s adjacent seas out to the first island chain, is reasonable and currently within reach, as Beijing continues allocating the national resources necessary to build a modern maritime force.
Sea denial is the term in the maritime strategic lexicography that most closely describes Beijing’s ambition for a navy sufficient to ensure the success of regional strategic plans, despite possible interference by the United States. Further maturation of the PLAN as an important instrument of national security will depend on how naval power and maritime economic interests are viewed by China’s strategists. The value to the nation of its rich offshore mineral and biological resources, and its dependence on seaborne trade and transportation, are clearly understood in Beijing. Countering the present emphasis on building a strong navy is China’s historic record as primarily a continental power, with periodic maritime power acquired only for specific strategic objectives for relatively brief periods. PLAN strategists are also looking beyond the Taiwan conundrum, with a view to SLOC defense over the great distances through the Indian Ocean.
China’s widening maritime interests and increased budget resources are fostering a strong, modernizing navy. The new force is already capable of projecting power throughout China’s littoral, from Honshu to Sumatra, including the waters surrounding Taiwan. Continuing growth and modernization of the PLAN will almost certainly lead to the belief by Chinese maritime strategists in Beijing’s ability to include within its strategic maritime goals those areas considered vital to its national security—all of East Asia.
Note on sources: FBIS reports remain an important source of information about the PLAN, but since approximately 2003, items addressing Chinese maritime strategy have been significantly reduced from the level of the previous ten years. This is apparently not due to FBIS management, but may reflect a decision by the PLA to stop publicizing discussions about maritime strategy; the reduction also seems to have coincided with the removal from office of former PLAN commander Admiral Shi Yunsheng.
1. The United States, for instance, used just two navy transports and a commercial passenger liner to move Marine and Army regiments from the United States to the Far East, between the Philippines and China, and between north and south China, as crises waxed and waned.
2. Vladimir Lenin, cited in Bruce W. Watson, “The Evolution of Soviet Naval Strategy,” in Bruce W. Watson and Peter M. Dunn, eds., The Future of the Soviet Navy: An Assessment to the Year 2000 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1986), 115.
3. Watson, 15.
4. David G. Muller, Jr., China’s Emergence As a Maritime Power (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983), 16.
5. Quoted in Srikanth Kondapalli, “China’s Naval Strategy,” Strategic Analysis, 23 (March 2000): 20–38.
6. China’s Xia-class fleet ballistic missile submarine, patterned on the U.S. George Washington-class/Soviet Hotel-class, successfully launched a missile in 1988, but may have never made any patrols at sea. See Richard Sharpe, ed., Jane’s Fighting Ships: 1995–1996 (London: Butler and Tanner Ltd., 1996), 114.
7. Kenneth R. McGruther, The Evolving Soviet Navy (Newport, R.I.: Naval War College Press, 1978), 47–48, 66–67.
8. Quoted in Bradley Hahn, “PRC Policy in Maritime Asia,” Journal of Defense and Diplomacy 4, no. 6 (June 1986): 20.
9. Quoted in Bradley Hahn, “China: Third Ranking Maritime Power—and Growing,” Pacific Defense Reporter (October 1988): 47.
10. See Harlan Jencks, “The PRC’s Military and Security Policy in the Post-Cold War Era,” Issues & Studies 30, no. 11 (November 1994): 74, about a 1989 study ordered by Liu, Balanced Development of the Navy in the Year 2000, which called for a strategy of “active offshore defense.”
11. Jing-dong Yuan, “China’s Defense Modernization: Implications for Asia-Pacific Security,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 17, no. 1 (June 1995): 70, cites the first distance; Alexander Huang, “Chinese Maritime Modernization and its Security Implications: The Deng Xiaoping Era and Beyond” (Ph.D. diss., The George Washington University, 1994), 13, gives the latter range.
12. See John Downing, “China’s Evolving Maritime Strategy,” Jane’s Intelligence Review (1 March 1996), 1; and Huang, 230
13. See Huang, 225ff. for this discussion.
14. J. C. Wylie, Military Strategy (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1967; reprint 1980), 49, is a classic work on modern naval strategy. Also see Winnefeld, 66: “The soldier shapes and exploits his environment; the sailor must adjust to it.”
15. Liu’s accomplishments are summed up in Alfred D. Wilhelm, Jr., China and Security in the Asian Pacific Region Through 2010, CNA Research Memorandum 95-226 (Alexandria, Va.: Center for Naval Analysis, 1996), 43.
16. Ibid., 191.
17. This point is discussed by John Downing, “China’s Maritime Strategy, Part 2: The Future,” Jane’s Intelligence Review 8, no. 4 (April 1996): 188.
18. Quoted in Watson, 120.
19. Paul H. B. Godwin, “Force Projection and China’s Military Strategy” (paper presented at the Sixth Annual Conference on the PLA, Coolfont, Va., June 1995), 4. Also see Godwin, “Changing Concepts of Doctrine, Strategy, and Operations in the People’s Liberation Army 1978–1987,” China Quarterly 112 (December 1987): 573–90.
20. Although, as J. R. Hill, Maritime Strategy for Medium Powers (Annapolis, Md.: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1986), 85, points out, if China were to employ this strategy, say in the case of Taiwan, “the penalties for getting it wrong may be quite severe.” Ibid., 229, Hill also delineates five indicators of “sea dependence,” all of which apply to China: seagoing trade, fish catches, size of Merchant Marine, ship building and repairing, and the offshore zone.
21. This list is a variation on the seventeen points delineated by David Alan Rosenberg, “Process: The Realities of Formulating Modern Naval Strategy” (paper presented at the Corbett-Richmond Conference, Newport, R.I.: U.S. Naval War College, September 1992), 6–20.
22. Cited in Huang, 99.
23. Quoted in You Ji, “A Test Case for China’s Defense and Foreign Policies,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 16, no. 4 (March 1995): 379.
24. Liu Huaqing has used this argument, stating that “the Chinese navy must live up to the historical responsibility to grow rapidly up into a major power in the Pacific area in order to secure the smooth progress of China’s economic modernization.” Quoted in Jun Zhan, “China Goes to the Blue Waters: The Navy, Seapower Mentality and the South China Sea,” The Journal of Strategic Studies 17, no. 3 (September 1994): 191.
25. See Hong Kong Ping Kuo Jih Pao (7 March 1997), A20, in FBIS-CHI-1997-114, for the State Oceanography Bureau’s estimate of China’s maritime wealth as “three million square kilometers of sea areas rich in fishing, petroleum, and mineral resources.” Beijing Xinhua (23 June 1999), in FBIS-CHI-1999-0623, Fujian Province reported in 1998 that “more than 900 deep-sea trawlers had been dispatched [around the world], bringing home a total catch of 600,000 tons” of fish—which was considered unsatisfactory.
26. Quoted in Huang Caihong, “Witnessing Maritime Exercise of the Chinese Navy,” Liaowang 45 (6 November 1995), in FBIS-CHI-95-235.
27. Most recently, see “ROK, China Resume Fishing Talks in Beijing,” The Korea Times (8 March 2000), in FBIS-KPP20000308000078: “Korea and China initialed a draft fisheries agreement in November 1998” which agreed on temporary EEZ boundaries; but also “ROKG to Intensify Watch Against PRC Boats Violating EEZ,” Seoul Yonhap (1 June 2000), in FBIS-KPP20000601000093, which quotes Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Lee Hang-kyu stating “he expects an increase in the number of Chinese fishing boats illegally operating in the [Korean] EEZ,” as “the China-Japan fisheries treaty went into effect.” Also see “Japan, China Plan Talks on New Fishery Pact,” Tokyo Jiji Press (5 April 2000), in FBIS-JPP20000405000014, announced the beginning of the latest in a series of discussions to activate “a new bilateral fishery accord,” based on “a provisional zone created as a result of a territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands.”
28. Physical description of these “islands” is from Richard Chapman, “Senkaku-Diaoyu Island Dispute,” USCINCPAC “VIC” (Honolulu, 29 February 2000), 1.
29. The UNCLOS, Article 83, states that “the delimitation of the continental shelf between States with opposite or adjacent coasts shall be effected by agreement on the basis of international law, . . . If no agreement can be reached within a reasonable period of time, the States concerned shall resort to the procedures provided [herein],” which include submitting the dispute to “conciliation” (Annex V), the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the International Court of Justice, or a special arbitral tribunal.
30. “Chinese Warships Make Show of Force at Protested Gas Rig,” Japan Times (10 September 2005, www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?Tnn20050910a1.htm).
31. See, for instance, “Isle Issue, Taiwan Threaten Ties Between Tokyo, Beijing,” Yomiuri Shimbun (8 August 1999), for a report that “PRC ocean research ships have conducted 25 surveys in the territorial waters and exclusive economic zone near the Senkaku Islands.”
32. The most optimistic estimate of SCS petroleum reserves, 55 billion tons, is in Xinhua (5 September 1994), in FBIS-CHI-1994-172.
33. Taiwan also passed a “Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone Law” in 1993, in which it claims sovereignty over the same U-shaped line in the South China Sea as does Beijing in its 1992 legislation, and issued a “White Paper on Maritime Policy,” Taiwan Central News Agency (22 June 99), in FBIS-CHI-1999-0622, which “stresses the ROC’s jurisdiction over the disputed Spratly Islands in the south China Sea” but notes that it is “willing to jointly develop the region’s natural resources with neighboring countries. . . .” In fact, Taiwan has not played a constructive role in settling the South China Sea territorial disputes, but has preferred to ride Beijing’s rigid coattails: as a former senior naval intelligence officer in Taiwan told the author, “What do we have to lose?”
34. See Xinhua (23 July 1996), in FBIS-CHI-1996-144, for Foreign Secretary Qian Qichen’s conciliatory statement at the ASEAN Regional Forum that the situation in the Spratlys was “stable.”
35. Mischief Reef (Huanyidao in Chinese), located well within the Philippines’ two-hundred-nautical-mile economic zone (EEZ), is the prime example of this encroachment. Whether the facilities will last past the first significant typhoon to blow through is another question. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) specifies that to be considered to have an “exclusive economic zone or continental shelf,” land must be able to “sustain human habitation or economic life of their own” (Art. 121). Hence, the efforts by various claimants to SCS rocks and reefs to construct facilities capable of “sustaining human habitation.”
36. See, for instance, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi, “Hong Kong Zhongguo Tongxun She (16 January 1999), in FBIS-CHI-99-025: “China has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and the contiguous maritime area.” Also, Defense Minister Chi Haotian, “Chi Haotian Reiterates PRC Stand on South China Sea Issue,” Xinhua (15 September 1999), in FBIS-CHI-99-0915: “the South China Sea has been China’s territory from ancient times and . . . China has had indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and their adjacent sea areas.”
37. C. M. LeGrand, “Memorandum for Undersecretary of Defense (Policy) and Director for Strategic Plans and Policy, ‘Chinese Straight Baseline Declaration’” (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense Representative for Ocean Policy Affairs, 21 May 1996), 1: “all of the straight baselines within the Chinese declaration are excessive and not in accordance with international law.” Beijing applies “straight baselines” for its mainland and offshore islands, but has not stated that they apply to the Spratlys.
38. “South China Sea Region,” eia, 4. John H. Noer, with David Gregory, Choke-points: Maritime Economic Concerns in Southeast Asia (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press in cooperation with the Center for Naval Analysis, 1996), provides a thorough breakdown of the merchant traffic through the South China Sea, by cargo and by ship ownership, and estimates costs for alternate routes in the event the Malacca or other straits are closed.
39. Zhu Rongji reiterated this during his visit to Washington, D.C., in April 1998. See “Stratfor’s Global Intelligence Update,” alert@stratfor.com (14 April 1999): 2.
40. Daniel Yergin, Dennis Eklof, and Jefferson Edwards, “Fueling Asia’s Recovery,” Foreign Affairs, 77:2 (March–April 1998): 42, estimate China will import “as much as 3 million” barrels of oil per day by 2010. Also see Hugar, 22ff., for a discussion of Chinese oil imports.
41. Quoted in David Zweig and Bi Jianhai, “China’s Global Hunt for Energy,” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 5 (September/October 2005): 34.
42. India’s increasing presence is suggested by New Delhi’s agreement with Hanoi for mutual naval training events. See Ben Barber, “Indian Navy Exercises Seen Apt to Irk Beijing,” The Washington Times (8 May 2000): 1. “Intelligence,” Far Eastern Economic Review 163 (20 April 2000): 4, reports that the Vietnamese navy’s deputy chief, Do Xuan Co, was exploring the possibility of repairing or even building ships in Indian shipyards.
43. “India, China Reiterate Resolve to Maintain Border Peace,” New Delhi Hindustan Times (5 April 2000). See Tan Hongwei, “ China Strives to Build a Fine Peripheral Environment,” Beijing Zhengguo Xinwen She (5 September 1999), in FBIS-CHI-99-1023, for Singh’s statement that India “does not regard China as a threat,” a statement that must be regarded with some skepticism.
44. One recent U.S. Naval Attaché to Beijing described PLAN strategists and planners as “completely focused on the Taiwan mission.”
45. See, for instance, Si Yanwne and Chen Wanjun, “Navy to Develop More High-Tech Equipment,” Jiefangjun Bao (9 June 1999) in FBIS-CHI-1999-0611, citing General Cao Gangchuan, director of the General Armaments Department that “it is necessary to put [navy] armament development in a prominent position of army building . . . increase armaments’ scientific and technological contents; and improve the quality and speed of armament development”; and Beijing Xinhua (10 June 1999), in FBIS-CHI-1999-0609, citing Cao that “the navy’s rapid reaction capacity, emergency field repair ability and defense readiness must also be improved.”
46. Quoted in Beijing Xinhua (21 April 1999), in FBIS-CHI-1999-0421.
47. Geoffrey Till, “Maritime Strategy in the Twenty-First Century,” in Geoffrey Till, ed., Seapower: Theory and Practice (Portland, Ore.: Frank Cass, 1994), 193, notes that the United States was able to maintain a task force off the coast of West Africa for seven months in 1990–91, before finally evacuating civilians from strife-torn Liberia.
48. China ratified the UNCLOS in 1996, and some strategists use this pact as rationale for including “military control of the seas [as] legitimate maritime economic activities.” Li Jie and Xu Shiming, “The UN Law of the Sea Treaty and the New Naval Mission,” Beijing Hsien-Tai Chun-Shih (February 1997), quoted in Hugar, 73.
49. See Lu Ning, The Dynamics of Foreign-Policy Decisionmaking in China (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997), 126ff., for an interesting description of the 1988 naval conflict with Vietnam when, according to the author, PLAN forces exceeded their instructions and drove national strategy.
50. The question of “red vs. expert” may remain a facet of civil-military relations in China, but drawing too sharp a dichotomy between army loyalty (to state, government, or party) and professionalism should be avoided. See works on this topic by Harlan Jencks, From Muskets to Missiles: Politics and Professionalism in the Chinese Army, 1945–1981 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982); Ellis Joffe, The Chinese Army After Mao (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987); David Shambaugh, Modernizing China’s Military: Progress, Problems, and Prospects (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2002); and Michael Swaine, The Role of the Chinese Military in National Security Policymaking (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corporation, 1998).
51. Sr. Col. Huang Xing and Sr. Col. Zuo Quandian, “Holding the Initiative in Our Hands in Conducting Operations, Giving Full Play to Our Own Advantages To Defeat Our Enemy—A Study of the Core Idea of the Operational Doctrine of the PLA,” Beijing Zhaongquo Junshi Kexue [China Military Science] 4 (20 November 1996): 49–56, in FBIS-CHI-1997. See ibid., 8, where the authors, who serve at the Academy of Military Science, clearly identify the United States as “our enemy,” and also display an imperfect knowledge of American weapons systems.
52. “Bolt from the blue” was first used in modern maritime strategy in the early twentieth century to describe a possible surprise German naval attack on Great Britain. See Arthur M. Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow: The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, vol. 1, The Road to War, 1904–1914 (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 144, for discussion of this concept.
53. Yan Youqiang, “Director of a Naval Headquarters Research Institute,” and Chen Rongxing, “On Maritime Strategy and the Marine Environment,” Beijing Zhongguo Junshi Kexue 2 (20 May 1997), 81–92, in FBIS-CHI-97-197. This may be a good description of China’s maritime strategic thought.