Red Star Over the Pacific

In the realm of military shipping, similarly, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) has made rapid strides. Not so long ago, Western mariners and scholars deprecated Chinese naval power. An oft-heard joke held that China would have to launch a “million-man swim” to land troops on Taiwan. In 1999 Boston College professor Robert Ross held forth on the “geography of the peace” in an article for the journal International Security. Ross argued, elegantly, that the United States would continue to rule the Asian seas, China would remain supreme on the Asian continent, and neither power would be able to apply its power against the other.¹ The American whale and the Chinese elephant might dislike each other, then, but there was little they could do about it. In a similar vein, Brookings Institution analyst Michael O’Hanlon wrote at length on the conflict in his article “Why China Cannot Conquer Taiwan.”² In 2001 National Defense University professor Bernard Cole maintained that the PLA Navy could not defend Chinese sea lines of communication (SLOCs) aside from “those immediately off its coast.” Cole concluded, furthermore, that the Chinese navy had little need to extend its seaward reach so long as the U.S. Navy remained the trustee of Asian maritime security.³ It could free ride on U.S. naval supremacy.

Few make such arguments these days. If anything, the PLA Navy now inspires excessive forebodings among leading officials and pundits. The Pentagon’s annual Military Power of the People’s Republic of China reports have taken on increasingly anxious overtones. The opaque nature of strategy in a closed society is responsible in part for this. Western analysts argue over whether defense spending figures released by Beijing are accurate.⁴ Sinologists and officials debate the intentions that accompany China’s increasingly impressive arsenal. “This situation will naturally and understandably lead to hedging against the unknown,” concludes the executive summary to the 2008 Military Power report.⁵ In April 2009, the PLA Navy held a naval review to mark the sixtieth anniversary of its founding. The review showcased domestically built Chinese warships, including no fewer than four indigenous submarines and its first Yuzhao-class amphibious assault ship.⁶ And, after years of studied denials and obfuscation, the People’s Liberation leadership has more or less openly stated that it wants aircraft carriers. During a meeting with Japanese defense minister Yasukazu Hamada, Chinese defense minister Liang Guanglie declared that Beijing would eventually build flattops. While Liang set no timetable for this ambitious new project, his comment represented a noteworthy departure from the standard PLA line.⁷

With regard to bases, the PLA Navy has built a base on Hainan Island capable of berthing nuclear submarines (and presumably surface units as well), extending its cruising radius toward the Strait of Malacca, the narrow sea connecting the South China Sea with resource suppliers in the Indian Ocean.⁸ Top Chinese officials fret over the “Malacca dilemma” created by threats to free passage through this maritime chokepoint.⁹ Chinese diplomats have negotiated basing rights throughout the Indian Ocean, giving rise to American and especially Indian worries about a “string of pearls” encircling the subcontinent from the sea.¹⁰ One well-known analyst, Gurpreet Khurana, sees a Sino-Indian “rivalry arc” extending all the way from Japan in Northeast Asia to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the west.¹¹ If scholars such as Sir Julian Corbett or K. M. Panikkar have it right, this would place India’s sea communications, and thus its national life, in Chinese hands, and it might demand that New Delhi project power into the Pacific as a riposte to Chinese encroachment in the Indian Ocean.¹² Indians remember acutely that the only time their nation lost its national independence was to a seaborne invader, Great Britain—hence New Delhi’s visceral response to Beijing’s pursuit of basing rights along the Indian seaboard.¹³

The material trappings of Mahanian sea power are increasingly in place for China. Does this add up to a Mahanian strategy? And, if so, what kind? The jury remains out on how, and to what ends, Beijing will apply its burgeoning naval might. It remains to be seen, moreover, how Mahanian thought will figure into Chinese strategic thought and, in turn, how it may affect Beijing’s maritime endeavors. China’s long, rich history and martial and philosophical traditions supply bountiful guidance, albeit from a predominantly continental perspective. To name just a few other sources of Chinese strategic thought, Confucius, Sun Tzu, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Liu Huaqing will exert influence on Chinese calculations. As Beijing embarks on its pursuit of command of the sea “with Chinese characteristics,” to borrow the common formula used by Chinese thinkers, it will clearly consult far more sources than Mahan, and some of these indigenous sources may carry more weight than any Western theorist. Sorting through these intellectual strands is our main purpose in this chapter.

In stark contrast, Mahan has inspired intense interest in Chinese scholarly and policy circles since Deng’s opening and reform initiative a quarter-century ago. Studies parsing terms such as “command of the sea” (zhihaiquan, or 制海权) and “command of communications” (zhijiaotongquan, or 制交通权) have multiplied. Some neo-Mahanians appear spellbound by the American theorist’s oft-cited description of command of the sea as “that overbearing power on the sea which drives the enemy’s flag from it, or allows it to appear only as a fugitive.”¹⁵ Chinese analysts have repeated this bellicose-sounding phrase at major international conferences to highlight the value of sea power for China.¹⁶

For Mahan, as we have seen, trade and commerce, merchant and naval fleets, and geographic expansion—by which he meant obtaining bases or basing agreements overseas, not imposing American colonial rule on subject peoples—merged under the aegis of sea power. Commerce ranked atop his hierarchy, and he vehemently denied lusting for trials of arms. Sea war was bad for trade.¹⁷ In a real sense, then, Mahan agreed with today’s globalization proponents, who point to the high if not prohibitive costs of fighting current or prospective trading partners. Seldom is war worth the political, military, or economic cost.

Even so, his writings lent themselves to zero-sum thinking. Many of his followers resigned themselves to naval war—a Darwinian struggle that would determine which nations prospered and which shriveled and died. “Growth is a property of healthful life,” opined Mahan in The Problem of Asia, and with it went a “right to insure by just means whatsoever contributes to national progress, and correlatively to combat injurious action taken by an outside agency, if the latter overpass its own lawful sphere.”¹⁸ Notes George Baer, “Central to the theory of sea power was the expectation of conflict. When a nation’s prosperity depends on shipborne commerce, and the amount of trade available is limited, then competition follows, and that leads to a naval contest to protect the trade.”¹⁹ In Imperial Germany, a rabidly Mahanian nation, big-fleet enthusiasts even coined the term “mahanism,” a saltwater variant of Social Darwinian ideas about growth, decay, and perpetual strife.²⁰ Inspired by a deterministic and simplistic interpretation of Mahan’s writings, “naval ideology” also animated the strategic thinking of Japanese leaders during the interwar period. ²¹

If Mahan indeed prized nonviolent international competition, he must have been appalled at such misuse of his theories. But many followers of Mahan, then and now, brush aside his advocacy of peaceful interchange in favor of his more bloody-minded writings—writings that evoke the glamour of the sea, fire the imagination, and promise to restore lost national majesty. Many Chinese strategists fall into that category. Mahan’s appeal to economics resonates with today’s China, a nation at once obsessed with economic development and increasingly reliant on seaborne shipments of oil, gas, and other commodities.²² But so does his call for a navy capable of commanding vital waters. This suggests that China’s commerce-driven maritime strategy will assume an increasingly military tincture.²³

Unlike strategic theorists who concentrate on the mechanics of strategy and operations, Alfred Thayer Mahan explores not only functional matters but also the larger political purposes furthered by maritime strategy. In the 1940s, Harold and Margaret Tuttle Sprout observed that Mahan had articulated “doctrines of sea power and manifest destiny.” He framed “a philosophy of sea power,” a “theory of national prosperity and destiny founded upon a program of mercantilistic imperialism,” and a “theory of naval strategy and defense” expanding upon operational and even tactical matters.²⁴ In Clausewitzian terms, war—a violent, interactive clash of wills—functions according to a “grammar” distinct from other human affairs.²⁵ But politics gives maritime enterprises their “logic,” determining the ends for which mariners strive.²⁶ Using the metaphor we introduced in chapter 1, the logic and grammar are Mahan’s two tridents of sea power.

It is possible to embrace one dimension of Mahanian theory—the logic or the grammar—while rejecting or downplaying the other. If the American theorist’s grammar of sea combat has fallen into disuse with time and technological change, his sea-power philosophy remains hypnotic. Chinese naval development attests to it. The Mahanian conceit that national greatness derives from sea power beguiles many Chinese strategists. None other than PLA Navy commander Wu Shengli proclaims that China is an “oceanic nation,” endowed by nature with a long coastline, many islands, and jurisdiction over a massive sea area. Admiral Wu calls on Chinese citizens to raise their collective consciousness of the seas, bringing about “the great revitalization of the Chinese nation” (中华民族伟大复兴).²⁷ Robust fleets roaming offshore are part of this. Mahan would have instantly recognized how Wu portrays the interplay between destiny and choice in China’s maritime future.

Economic development and energy security have riveted attentions on the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, and the seaways passing along China’s East Asian coast—sea lines of communication (SLOCs) conveying precious cargoes into Chinese seaports. Thus Chinese leaders have come to see free passage for Chinese shipping through the Yellow, East China, and South China seas as a matter of surpassing importance, if not crucial to the future of Chinese Communist rule. They balk at entrusting their most basic interest to the uncertain, perhaps transitory goodwill of the United States, the self-appointed guarantor of maritime security in East Asia. As Ye Hailin of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences explains rather evocatively, “No matter how much China desires a harmonious world and harmonious oceans, it cannot possibly rely on other countries’ naval forces to guard the safety of its SLOCs. A big country that builds its prosperity on foreign trade cannot put the safety of its ocean fleet in the hands of other countries. Doing so would be the equivalent of placing its throat under another’s dagger and marking its blood vessels in red ink.”²⁹ In Ye’s eyes, China’s inability or unwillingness to protect its own maritime interests would invite others to disrupt its commerce, thereby exploiting its vulnerability. Thus, the Chinese recognize that while the U.S. Navy has safeguarded Asian shipping for six decades, its benevolent posture could change radically, and it could do so almost overnight. Washington might threaten the flow of Chinese resources in times of crisis, holding the Chinese economy hostage. Chinese strategists fret over the prospect of an American naval blockade.³⁰

Chinese thinkers, then, are acutely aware that geographic factors impinge on economic fitness. To China, the first island chain, which runs southward from the Japanese home islands through the Indonesian archipelago, looks like a barricade thrown up by an America intent on containing Chinese sea power. Chinese commentators recall that Secretary of State Dean Acheson delineated a U.S. “defense perimeter of the Pacific” in 1950—a defensive line that coincided roughly with the island chain.³¹ Sea-power advocates are prone to view the island chain much as Acheson did—as an American rampart blocking Chinese maritime operations. The economic implications of this are plain to Chinese eyes.

Control of Taiwan, conversely, would allow the PLA to erect its own Great Wall at sea, giving Beijing some say over the exercise of foreign naval and military power in nearby seas and skies. Once PLA forces could operate at will among the islands, China in effect would have inscribed its own defense perimeter of the Pacific, turning Dean Acheson’s concept outward toward the Pacific Ocean. Foreign fleets contemplating hostile entry into the China seas would think twice if confronted with Chinese forces operating from the mainland, from the China seas, or from island bases. Beijing’s liberty of action would expand immensely once it recovered this defensive stronghold.

Taiwan would be a platform for offensive sea power as well. Analysts view Taiwan as the one geographic asset that can grant Chinese forces direct access to the Pacific. If the island is a guard tower in an offshore Great Wall, then its offensive value is unmatched. During World War II, Admiral Ernest King declared that the U.S. Navy could “put the cork in the bottle” of the South China Sea by wresting Formosa from Japan. That is, a nation in possession of Taiwan has the freedom to cut the sea communications connecting Northeast with Southeast Asia or, alternatively, to keep the bottle uncorked for its own use.³² This is the essence of command of the sea. Chinese thinkers recall General Douglas MacArthur’s description of Taiwan as “an unsinkable aircraft carrier and submarine tender” positioned off the Chinese coasts, bolstering the aerial and undersea components of America’s containment strategy. ³³ The United States stationed surveillance and nuclear-capable combat aircraft on Taiwan, which forms the midpoint of the inner island chain, until the 1970s. References to Taiwan-based “foreign forces” are commonplace even today. Bad memories linger.

Chinese analysts, then, cite Mahanian-sounding principles when appraising the value of Taiwan. They occasionally cast their gaze as far as Guam, America’s naval stronghold in the second island chain, discussing it in similarly austere terms.³⁴ If Taipei preserves its de facto independence, the mainland will remain confined within the island chain, unable to range freely into the broad Pacific. Declares the authoritative Science of Military Strategy, “If Taiwan should be alienated from the mainland . . . China will forever be locked to the west side of the first chain of islands in the West Pacific.” If so, “the essential strategic space for China’s rejuvenation will be lost.”³⁵ On its face, at least, China’s geostrategic quandary resembles that confronted by Imperial Germany a century ago. (See chapter 3.) If America could project power inward from the island, China can project it outward. The offshore island chain at once constitutes a defensive and an offensive asset. It is no passive edifice.

This remains the starkest official statement of China’s Mahanian outlook. It also represents the first mention of command of the “commons”—namely the seas, skies, space, and perhaps even cyberspace—in an official directive. “China’s National Defense in 2004” orders the PLA Navy to acquire warships, aircraft, precision armaments, and information technology suitable to support its bid for zhihaiquan—command of the sea, or sea control—in China’s environs.

For reasons unknown, the 2006 defense white paper drops the Mahanian language found in its predecessor. But it remains deeply ambivalent about the future of global politics, faithful to the offensively minded appraisal of offshore waters and airspace voiced before, and true to the 2004 edition’s geopolitical bent. The report designates threats to international commerce as a major source of concern, declaring that “security issues related to energy, resources, finance, information and international shipping routes are mounting.” Strikingly, of the five security issues listed in the report, three relate directly to seaborne transport, one leg of the Mahanian trinity.

The document further states, “The Navy aims at gradual extension of the strategic depth for offshore defensive operations and enhancing its capabilities in integrated maritime operations and nuclear counterattacks. The Air Force aims at speeding up its transition from territorial air defense to both offensive and defensive operations.”³⁷ (our emphasis). The explicitly Mahanian terminology is missing; the notion of commanding the commons in an expanding offshore belt remains.

The 2008 defense white paper softens the harsh-sounding tone struck in the 2004 and 2006 editions. It repeats its predecessors’ mandate for offshore operations but pays homage to working with other sea powers to meet non-traditional threats like piracy, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and, presumably, seaborne weapons proliferation. The white paper depicts this as the latest phase in an evolving, increasingly outward-looking naval posture:

From the 1950s to the end of the 1970s the main task of the Navy was to conduct inshore defensive operations. Since the 1980s, the Navy has realized a strategic transformation to offshore defensive operations. Since the beginning of the new century . . . the Navy has been striving to improve in an all-round way its capabilities of integrated offshore operations, strategic deterrence and strategic counterattacks, and to gradually develop its capabilities of conducting cooperation in distant waters and countering non-traditional security threats, so as to push forward the overall transformation of the service.³⁸

This passage captures the impressive progress the Chinese navy has made since its humble beginnings during the Maoist era and the diverse range of missions it will be expected to fulfill in the coming years. At one end of the operational spectrum, the PLA Navy will provide China with its undersea deterrent, securing Beijing’s retaliatory capacity against a disarming first strike. At the other end, Chinese flotillas will help maintain good order at sea in waters deemed critical to China’s energy security and commercial access. China’s apparent willingness to telegraph its plans to shoulder nontraditional tasks marks a major departure from previous white papers, bespeaking growing confidence in Chinese capability at sea.

It is important to clarify the key terminologies and concepts used in the series of white papers cited here, for they provide a sound basis to properly understand the priorities the PLA Navy assigns to its current and future roles and missions. In particular, “offshore defense” remains a foundational concept for Chinese planners, but confusion about its precise meaning persists in the West. Although jinhai ( 006

) is normally translated as “offshore” in official publications, a more literal and perhaps more accurate rendering of the term is “near seas.” As Nan Li explains, “Offshore is too vague to reflect the relative distance that the Chinese term intends to express.”³⁹ “Near seas,” he contends, is a better expression of a Sinocentric perspective of the nautical environment. For the purposes of this study, however, the terms “offshore” and “near seas” are used interchangeably. “Near,” we maintain, is no less subjective than “offshore.”

In the past, some observers concluded that “offshore” connoted the capacity to project power in terms of distance, usually measured at two hundred nautical miles. But authoritative figures and sources in the Chinese navy have weighed in definitively on the subject, and a closer look suggests that Chinese strategists do not subscribe to this narrow spatial view. In his memoir, Admiral Liu Huaqing, the founding father of the modern Chinese navy—and an officer known in the West as “China’s Mahan”—set the record straight .⁴⁰ As the PLA Navy commander in the early 1980s, Liu provided the intellectual foundation for China’s naval strategy under the general guidance of Deng Xiaoping. As such, Liu writes with authority. He states clearly: “‘Near seas’ refers to our nation’s Yellow Sea, East [China] Sea, South [China] Sea, Spratly archipelago, and the waters within and beyond the Taiwan-Okinawa island chain, as well as the northern sea area of the Pacific. Just beyond the ‘near seas’ is the ‘mid-far seas.’”⁴¹ Liu’s brief description of what the PLA Navy considers the near seas reveals several analytical insights worthy of attention. First, geographic boundaries do not necessarily dictate Chinese conceptions of the nation’s maritime environs. For Liu, naval operations undertaken pursuant to offshore defense are not confined to the bodies of water enveloped by the first island chain. For instance, Liu’s reference to the “northern sea area of the Pacific” may include waters well east of the Japanese archipelago. How far offshore defense goes beyond the first island chain is left unstated—perhaps deliberately, to allow future generations of PLA commanders to interpret it according to China’s needs and capabilities of the moment.

Second, it is notable that Liu developed and refined the near-seas concept more than a quarter-century ago. Its longevity not only attests to the impressive long-term nature of Liu’s vision for the PLA Navy, but it also speaks volumes about the conceptual flexibility of the term. Liu’s insistence that offshore defense had to be disentangled from arbitrary distances ensured that the range of offshore defense could be extended commensurate with the PLA Navy’s growing capabilities. Recent white papers pushing offshore defense farther and farther from the mainland coast appear to validate the malleability of the concept.

Third, Liu’s definition of near seas conveys a very Sinocentric worldview and thus a highly proprietary attitude toward China’s littorals. This apparent presumptuousness is unsurprising, given that major offshore sea areas were historically integral to the Chinese periphery and thus qualified as a Chinese nautical preserve. Beijing’s sovereign claims in the China seas should be understood partly in this context. In this sense, offshore defense should be treated as a subcomponent of Chinese homeland defense. We should therefore expect China to attach extraordinary value to fighting and winning in the waters that fall within the near-seas construct.

The PLA Navy’s official encyclopedia defines offshore defense in exclusively functional terms, encompassing four main objectives. The Chinese navy will (1) hold fast to defensive naval strategic objectives; (2) increase its maritime defensive power; (3) carry out battlefield preparations; and (4) implement active defense. According to the entry: “[Offshore defense involves] the combined use of all kinds of methods to exercise the overall effects of maritime power to preserve oneself to the maximum extent while unceasingly exhausting and annihilating the attacking enemy. It requires a sufficient grasp of mobile combat capabilities to search and destroy the enemy, gradually shift the power balance, change the strategic situation, and thereby appropriately time the transition to the strategic counter offensive and attack.”⁴² The entry on offshore defense concludes that “[as] the effective ranges of at-sea offensive weaponry increase, the theory and practice of offshore defensive strategy face many major reforms.” It recognizes the interactive nature of maritime warfare and anticipates fighting a superior adversary that boasts greater reach and striking power. The entry was written in 1999, before the Chinese navy achieved its current stature. Like Liu Huaqing, succeeding generations of PLA Navy commanders clearly foresaw the need to expand offshore defense and adapt it to newly emerging military trends.

Writing in the prestigious Junshi Kexue journal, Major General Yao Youzhi and Senior Colonel Chen Zeliang argue that the ever-competitive nature of “warfare under high-technology conditions” demands the military capacity to extend and assert control over the wide commons, or what the authors refer to as the “communications battlefield” ( 007

). They declare:

Carrying out offensive defense [gongshi fangyu, or 008

] requires the improvement of communications battlefield construction. . . . Under the new historical conditions, the communications battlefield expands simultaneously towards the enemy and us. We must not only defend adequately our own communications battlefield, but we must seek to push the communications battlefield in the direction of the adversary. We must attack or slow down the enemy on the routes it must use. At times, the perimeter of the communications battlefield could extend from the land to the sea and air. Expanding the scope of the outward-oriented communications battlefield is essential to preparations for military struggles and to guarantee “fighting to win.”⁴³

This view of an enlarged and more competitive battle space across the various dimensions of the commons comports fully with the broader naval requirements set forth by successive defense white papers. For some, this more forward-leaning defense posture is consistent with the lessons of Chinese history. As Colonel Dai Xu states: “The newly formed ‘sea-approaching’ development direction of the Chinese military construction, compared with the long-term old-fashioned land concept, did push the line of defense a bit outward, but the nature of strategic defense remains unchanged. In the past 200 years, all the wars took place on the land or at sea near China. China deservedly has the right to push the battlefields farther away.”⁴⁴ More notably, Chinese writers insist on a highly offensive operational stance to win and exercise command of communications. This offensive spirit traces its origins to China’s own strategic and military traditions. While Chinese officials, mariners, and scholars draw their grand inspiration from Mahan, an American theorist, they frequently consult the politico-military writings of Mao Zedong for help with force structure, strategy, and naval doctrine. As we show in the following, references to offshore defense and offensive defense owe their conceptual existence to Maoist strategic thought. As such, it is worth revisiting his theories of warfare to appreciate the grammar of future Chinese sea power.

Chairman Mao refined his “offensive-defensive” approach to warfighting over long decades of waging land warfare from a position of relative weakness, first to expel Japanese occupiers from China and later, during the Chinese Civil War, to defeat Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Army.⁴⁵ Unable to prevail by conventional means, staging a quick, decisive victory, the Red Army replied to the Nationalist campaigns by deliberately prolonging the war, wearying its enemies, and recruiting among the Chinese populace. Mao accepted much of the guidance advanced in Sun Tzu’s Art of War, one of his favorite works of strategic theory, while tacitly ignoring Sun Tzu’s warning against protracted war.

This was sheer expediency. Like today’s Chinese sea-power proponents, Mao ridiculed passive defense, even while his Red Army appeared capable of little else. He foresaw that his theory of protracted war might be misread as an endorsement of passivity, so he took pains to distance himself from it. “Only a complete fool or a madman,” he proclaimed, “would cherish passive defense as a talisman.” Rather, active defense referred to the art of preparing the conditions for a strategic counteroffensive culminating in a decisive engagement: “As far as I know, there is no military manual of value nor any sensible military expert, ancient or modern, Chinese or foreign, that does not oppose passive defense, whether in strategy or tactics.... That is an error in war, a manifestation of conservatism in military matters, which we must resolutely oppose.”⁴⁶ Despite the physical mismatch in favor of the Nationalist Army, the Red Army blended direct and indirect attacks (cheng and ch’i) artfully, in the best tradition of Sun Tzu .⁴⁷ Ultimately, after biding their time on the strategic defensive, the communists were able to shift the balance of forces in their favor, take the strategic offensive, and prevail.

Dexterity was essential. “Militarily speaking,” Mao counseled, “our warfare consists of the alternate use of the defensive and the offensive.” Strategic retreat was the right choice at the outset of a defensive campaign, but only until a powerful counterblow could be delivered. Defending forces should exploit China’s vast strategic depth. They could feign weakness, falling back to tempt their enemies to overextend themselves:

Defensive warfare, which is passive in form, can be active in content, and can be switched from the stage in which it is passive in form to the stage in which it is active both in form and in content. In appearance a fully planned strategic retreat is made under compulsion, but in reality it is effected in order to conserve our strength and bide our time in order to defeat the enemy, to lure him in deep and prepare for our counter-offensive.⁴⁸

Mao likened Red Army forces to a “clever boxer” who “usually gives a little ground at first, while the foolish one rushes in furiously and uses up all his resources at the very start, and in the end he is often beaten by the man who has given ground.” “Avoid the enemy when he is full of vigor,” he advised, quoting Sun Tzu; then “strike when he is fatigued and withdraws.”⁴⁹ After falling back on their base areas, concentrating force while tiring their opponents, Red Army defenders would strike back. Over time, they would assume the offensive, carrying the battle to the foe.

Mao’s theory of active defense displays a pronounced geospatial component. Of the second Sino-Japanese War, he wrote that the invaders operated along “exterior lines” in a bid to envelop the defending Chinese, who operated on “interior lines.” Then as now, the prospect of encirclement excited concern among Chinese leaders, prompting them to think ahead about countermeasures. According to Milan Vego,

A force moves along interior lines when it runs between those of the enemy’s lines of operations. Interior lines always originate from a central position. They are formed from a central position prolonged in one or more directions or they can also be understood as a series of central positions linked with one another. Interior lines in general allow concentration of one’s forces against one part of the enemy force, while holding the other in check with a force distinctly inferior in strength.⁵⁰

Relegated to the interior lines, Chinese Communist forces fought at a disadvantage, but even so, it was “possible and necessary to use tactical offensives within the strategic defensive, to fight campaigns and battles of quick decision within a strategically protracted war and to fight campaigns and battles on exterior lines within strategically interior lines.” This maxim held true “both for regular and for guerrilla warfare.”⁵¹ To prosecute microlevel offensives within a macrolevel defensive campaign, Mao admonished commanders to vanquish enemy forces piecemeal. “Concentrate a big force to strike at [and annihilate] a small section of the enemy force,” he advised. Better to cut off one of an enemy’s fingers entirely than to injure them all.⁵² Interior lines, then, could be turned to the weaker party’s advantage. This applies not only to terrestrial campaigns but also to naval combat. Furthermore, Mao mused about forging alliances around the Pacific basin, allowing China to operate against Japanese imperialism along exterior lines. Despite the strategic encirclement of Chinese forces, an “anti-Japanese front in the Pacific area” constituted a sort of diplomatic counter-encirclement.⁵³

Maoist theory, then, informs the logic of Chinese statecraft and grand strategy as well as its operational and tactical grammar. Mao’s military writings were unambiguously offensive in character. Passive defense represented “a spurious kind of defense” while “the only real defense is active defense.” Offensive defense was “defense for the purpose of counter-attacking and taking the offensive.”⁵⁴ Defensive measures were transient, dictated by an unfavorable balance of forces. They were not the core of China’s national strategy, let alone its strategic preference.⁵⁵ For the CCP leader, clearly, resort to the strategic defensive did not limit military strategy or tactics to the purely defensive or passive.

Mao Zedong’s strategic wisdom applies to sea as well as land combat. Prompted by Mahan and Mao, Chinese naval strategists such as Ni Lexiong now talk routinely of prying control of the waters within the first island chain from the U.S. Navy’s grasp.⁵⁶ They intend to surround and control these waters by offensive means, even while the United States retains its overall mastery of Asian waters. Many Chinese see American rule of East Asian waters as a latter-day, nautical version of the Nationalists’ strategy of encirclement and suppression—an effort to use superior firepower and numbers to suppress China’s rightful aspirations on the high seas.⁵⁷ Mao’s Red Army fought back against encirclement and suppression by means suitable for naval combat; indeed, evidence suggests that many Chinese strategists do transpose Mao’s land-warfare principles to the sea.⁵⁸ If the PLA Navy abides by Mao’s strategic wisdom, it will remain patient until it attains a position of relative strength vis-à-vis prospective antagonists. Mahan, then, seemingly furnishes the geopolitical logic for an offensive Chinese naval strategy while Beijing looks to the doctrines of Mao for the strategies and tactics to execute such a strategy. This represents an impressive synthesis of strategic theories from foreign and indigenous sources.

Fin de siècle America greeted Mahan’s works tepidly at first. Of the publication of The Influence of Sea Power upon History, he observed wryly, “That it filled a need was speedily evident by favorable reviews, which were much more explicit and hearty in Europe, and especially in Great Britain, than in the United States.”⁶⁰ It took events to overcome the Republic’s historic insularity, prompting Americans to look westward toward Asia and southward toward the Caribbean and the isthmus, its gateway to the Pacific. Mahan contended that, by defeating Spain in 1898, the United States had succeeded to Spanish duties and responsibilities in the Caribbean and the Philippines, the latter a pillar of the first standing U.S. naval presence in Asia.⁶¹ The U.S. Navy built a twenty-battleship fleet, as Mahan urged, and it held European fleets at bay in American waters. The Navy had little need for a fleet able to outgun entire great-power navies; it merely needed enough firepower to defeat the largest contingent likely to venture into the Americas. American strategy might—but need not—culminate in a fleet encounter like Trafalgar or Tsushima.

Imperial Germany leapt at Mahanian theory. On one occasion, Kaiser Wilhelm II declared, “I am just now not reading but devouring Captain Mahan’s book and am trying to learn it by heart. It is on board all my ships and [is] constantly quoted by my captains and officers.”⁶² Despite German leaders’ gushing, Mahan was a poor fit for Germany, a continental power shackled by disastrous maritime geography. Mahan wrote mainly for Americans, whose Navy and merchant marine enjoyed easy access to the Atlantic and Pacific. Unlike Germany, the United States faced no land threats that diverted resources from seagoing pursuits. Vessels originating in German ports must pass by the British Isles, either through the English Channel or between Scotland and Norway, to reach the broad Atlantic—and thence German possessions in Africa and Asia.⁶³ Royal Navy men-of-war cordoned off the “dead” North Sea, imposing a distant blockade that left German shipping to wither on the vine during World War I. (Chapter 3 examines the Imperial German case in some detail.)

Mahan reported that the Japanese were his most ardent followers. In his memoir, he recounted “pleasant correspondence with several Japanese officials and translators.” That no one had “shown closer or more interested attention to the general subject” than the Japanese was obvious from “their preparation and their accomplishments in the recent war” with Russia (1904–1905). “As far as known to myself,” added Mahan, “more of my works have been done into Japanese than into any other one tongue.”⁶⁴ In 1902 Admiral Yamamoto Gombei offered him a lucrative teaching post at Japan’s Naval Staff College.⁶⁵ Apart from its initial success, however, Imperial Japan followed a maritime strategy that miscarried badly—owing in part to the dominant Japanese interpretation of Mahan, under which Japan sought to carve out an autarkic economic zone, impose a defense perimeter along the second island chain, and build an unmatched fleet of big-gun battleships.⁶⁶ Tokyo’s obsession with geographic features and force structure proved its undoing.

Like past sea powers, China now teems with Mahan enthusiasts and their critics. To date, however, Chinese commentary has seldom gone beyond familiar Mahanian principles. Judging from available literature, Mahan’s more nuanced assessments of sea power have yet to sink in. Chinese analysts also tend to gravitate toward the more memorable passages of Mahan’s works for their own narrow purposes, ratifying predetermined conclusions. They accept at face value, for example, the notion that Mahan’s single-minded purpose was to persuade nations to build navies able to settle economic disputes through force of arms.⁶⁷ Typifying some of the more casual descriptions of Mahan’s writings, Zhan Huayun states:

U.S. naval officer and historian Mahan, who created the theory of naval power, pointed out that the determining factor in the rise and fall of all empires was whether or not they had naval power and could control the seas. His theory of naval power can be considered a watershed in world naval strategy. His doctrine of the theory of naval power and theory of naval strategy arose at an historic moment, becoming the cornerstone of Western naval strategic theory and an ideological weapon in seeking hegemony.⁶⁸

Feng Zhaokui quotes Mahan as writing, “Sea dominance embraces everything that can make a nation a great one by means of the sea or through the sea.” The author then proceeds to chide Mahan for making sweeping martial claims about sea power, stating, “Instead of saying it would be enough so long as the fleets of a country were able to sail through the vast ocean, the unspoken message contained in this remark indicated that gaining control over important sea routes and acquiring overseas resources was actually the real intention of the major nations that had risen up.”⁶⁹ Feng urges China to avoid the hegemonic path that Mahan laid out for ambitious maritime powers of his own day. Others directly credit Mahan with U.S. preeminence in maritime Asia, particularly its dominant military position along the first island chain, and take him to task for America’s purportedly hostile intentions toward China. According to Gao Xinsheng of the Shenyang Artillery Academy:

In Mahan’s famous “The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783,” he expressed that to have the command of the sea, one must rely on powerful naval force and establish a naval base network all over the globe.... Under the guidance of his principle, America occupied most of the main islands in the Pacific Ocean in succession, built many important military bases on the islands, and also formed a solid military alliance with island nations in the Pacific Ocean such as Japan, Australia, the Philippines, and Singapore. This realized America’s maritime expansion strategy, formed the so-called “island blockade line,” and became America’s important strong points to control the sea and a netlike strategic layout.⁷⁰

Chen Zhou, a senior research fellow at the PLA Academy of Military Sciences, argues that raw geopolitical interests have always underpinned U.S. China policy. He declares: “From the very beginning the U.S. strategy toward China had a profound geostrategic background. Exactly following the thinking of U.S. naval strategist Mahan, the U.S. occupied Hawaii, the Philippines and other important Pacific islands, making them ‘stepping-stones’ for marching towards Asia and China and stretching out its forces as far as 7,000 miles away from its west coast and as close as only 700 miles to China’s eastern coast.”⁷¹ Both Gao and Chen draw a straight line from Mahanian sea-power theory published more than a century ago to U.S. strategy in Asia today. The linearity and causal relationship depicted by the Chinese are dubious from an analytical standpoint. That Mahan’s logic resonates deeply with Chinese strategists, leading them to impute Mahanian motives to U.S. policymakers—past and present—is beyond doubt.

Nevertheless, these cursory characterizations of Mahan’s theory border on caricature, and they raise the possibility that Beijing is oversimplifying and misreading the American theorist. On the one hand, a misinterpretation of Mahan could turn out to be harmless. Chinese analysts could run into an analytical dead end and move on to another theory more suitable for China’s unique local conditions. On the other hand, a less benign outcome is conceivable. If the Chinese accept the martial themes underlying Mahan’s arguments uncritically and pattern Chinese maritime policy on these themes, then it is possible Beijing will follow the German or Japanese path to sea power. If so, the prospects for harmony in the Asia-Pacific region will dim.

There are at least two possible explanations for this apparent superficiality, each with important implications for the development of Chinese strategic thought about the seas. First, PLA Navy thinkers are still reading and digesting his theories and considering how to apply them to Chinese foreign policy goals. The literature suggests that they are finding there is far more to Mahan than combat between symmetrical battle fleets. Since “commerce thrives by peace and suffers by war,” maintained Mahan, “it follows that peace is the superior interest” of seagoing nations. Mentions of Mahan have appeared more and more frequently in Chinese discourses since the early 2000s. They have become more varied, expanding beyond The Influence of Sea Power upon History to encompass more geopolitically minded books such as The Problem of Asia and The Interest of America in Sea Power.

As Chinese thinkers enrich their understanding of Mahanian theory—integrating not only the operational, tactical, and force-structure dimensions but also his views of international relations—they may well modulate their attitudes toward the proper uses of sea power. The primacy of peaceful commercial competition would be a welcome addition to China’s Mahanian discourses. Western analysts should monitor for signs of a deeper, richer grasp of sea-power theory.

A number of scholars in China have already demonstrated a more sophisticated comprehension of Mahan. Liu Zhongmin’s three-part series on sea-power theory, for instance, exhibits comprehensive coverage of Mahan’s voluminous writings, representing a discernible advance in scholarship.⁷² Beijing has also been analyzing the rise and fall of past great powers, sorting through history for guidance on how to manage its own ascent. Analysts appear keenly aware that a peaceful rise demands a more modest and prudent use of sea power, lest other seafaring powers—especially the United States—seek to counterbalance China at sea.

Indeed, some Chinese neo-Mahanians urge Beijing to exercise a version of “limited sea power” ( 009

) that remains geographically circumscribed within the first island chain.⁷³ In their view, a genuinely Mahanian PLA Navy ought to concentrate its efforts on seaways critical to trade and on defending China’s maritime sovereignty. Such a China would content itself with an adequate—but not overbearing—fleet. Still others are beginning to acknowledge the singular importance Mahan attached to peacetime commerce. They clearly recognize that Mahan never counseled naval war for its own sake.⁷⁴

At the more concrete operational and tactical levels, some Chinese strategists openly disavow Mahanian followers who are enamored with the most bellicose interpretations of command of the sea. Rear Admiral Huang Jiang, the dean of the Naval Command Academy, offers one of the most insightful and nuanced notions of command of the sea. He counsels:

Seizing command of the sea is not a zero-sum interaction. In sea battle, the loss of our freedom of movement does not necessarily mean that the enemy has gained freedom of movement. Similarly, preventing the enemy from attaining freedom of movement does not mean that we possess freedom of movement. It is only when one side not only immobilizes enemy freedom of movement at sea, but also enjoys unfettered ability to maneuver at sea that command of the sea has been grasped. Otherwise, command of the sea remains in a contested state, belonging to neither side.⁷⁵

Admiral Huang is acutely aware that command is a highly uncertain and difficult undertaking. Indeed, his words hark back to Sir Julian Corbett, who maintained that an uncommanded sea, always in dispute, was the norm.⁷⁶ He recognizes that the Chinese navy will likely operate in an ambiguous warfighting environment in which sea control will be elusive and fleeting at best. Ji Rongren and Wang Xuejin of the National Defense University prophesy a fluid contest for command between China and potential antagonists. They observe:

Command of communications does not discount the possibility of repeated gains and losses of command during a certain time period and within a certain battlespace. For any powerful military, command of communications is always a relative concept. No military could ever completely seize command of communications, the air, and the sea from beginning to end. For our military suffering from relative backwardness in equipment, this predicament is even more acute. The duration of command will be limited, the degree of control will be relative, the scope of control will be confined, and the gain and loss of command will be situational.⁷⁷

These sober assessments are a far cry from assertions that China could and should seek “absolute” command. In practical terms, this more realistic appraisal conforms to China’s offshore defense strategy, an effort to assert sea control for a finite time up to several hundred miles off the mainland’s coast. Mahan, Mao, and Liu would certainly have approved. Encouraging analytical trends, then, are starting to emerge among Chinese thinkers. How much momentum this more nuanced, more accurate interpretation of sea-power theory will gain in Beijing remains to be seen.

A more worrisome alternative is that Chinese navalists are simply using Mahan to lobby for a big navy composed of expensive, high-tech platforms. They do not need to read Mahan’s works widely or deeply to hype the threat to Chinese maritime interests, building the case for a strong fleet. One article urging Beijing to build an oceangoing naval fleet suggests that opportunists are indeed using Mahan as authority for their policy preference, namely a decisive shift of resources to the sea services. Reconstructing an overly simplistic history of sea power, of a sort often attributed to Mahan, Luo Yuan states:

When we look at history, we can see that whether a country is powerful or not is closely related with its naval forces. When its naval forces are powerful, then the country is strong; when its naval forces are weak, then the country is also fragile. During the 500 years from the 15th century to the 20th century, whether the strength of the main countries in Europe grew or declined and whether they won or failed in competition between different countries obviously depended on their naval forces.⁷⁸

Other Mahanians seize on a passage from The Problem of Asia that alerted the U.S. leadership of a century ago to the perils of neglecting sea power. Mahan argues that a “sagacious statesman” would grasp the “national backwardness” of American sentiment toward sea power and work tirelessly to “provide the organized force—especially the naval—without which the attempted expression of national will, on emergency, becomes the clumsy and abortive gestures of a flabby and untrained giant.”⁷⁹ Chinese analysts are fond of citing this evocative metaphor as a preface to their calls for a more aggressive naval buildup.⁸⁰ They, too, are attempting to telegraph an urgent message to their political masters: the Chinese navy must modernize speedily if it is to enforce Beijing’s will in the international system.

By no means would the PLA Navy be the first navy to use Mahan as a rallying cry. Indeed, it remains a standard quip that U.S. Navy leaders use Mahan to justify building a big fleet but otherwise leave his books on the shelf. There is doubtless a sloganeering aspect to the PLA Navy’s use of Mahan. Like other works of strategic theory—Sun Tzu’s Art of War comes to mind—Mahan’s writings are malleable. They can be put to a variety of uses, from stoking Chinese nationalism to carving out bigger navy budgets. If Chinese Mahanians cherry-pick the parts of his theory that prescribe apocalyptic fleet encounters, China’s maritime rise may tend toward confrontation with fellow sea powers. That is, if the same drumbeat of Mahanian commentary persists, it will furnish a leading indicator of trouble for the U.S. Navy and its Asian partners.

It bears mentioning that even if China does interpret Mahan in warlike fashion, it need not construct a navy symmetrical to the U.S. Navy to achieve its maritime goals, such as upholding territorial claims around the Chinese nautical periphery, commanding East Asian seas and skies, and safeguarding distant sea lines of communication. (We will revisit the grammar of Chinese force structure and operations in chapter 4.) Beijing could accept Mahan’s general logic of naval strategy while seeking to command vital sea areas with weaponry and methods quite different from anything Mahan foresaw. If the much-discussed antiship ballistic missile pans out, for instance, the PLA could hold U.S. Navy carrier strike groups at a distance.⁸¹ Medium-sized Chinese aircraft carriers could operate freely underneath that defensive shield, sparing the PLA Navy the technical and doctrinal headaches associated with constructing big-deck carriers comparable to the U.S. Navy’s Nimitz or Ford classes. Beijing would fulfill its Mahanian goal of local sea control at modest cost—an eminently sensible approach, and one that Mahan would have applauded. Western observers should avoid projecting their own assumptions onto Chinese strategic thinkers.

To be sure, Chinese strategists are not marching in lockstep on maritime strategy. Indeed, discord rather than unanimity characterizes the discourse on the future of Chinese sea power. Analysts lodge a variety of objections to the neo-Mahanian school of thought, invoking other strategic theorists to buttress their claims. Continentalists, for example, look to Sir Halford Mackinder’s land-power theories for inspiration.⁸² Given China’s preoccupation with landward threats to its north throughout its history, Mackinder’s writings enjoy a fairly large following. Moreover, land-power enthusiasts are as likely as Mahanians to caricature and oversimplify their favorite theories. Although translations of Mackinder’s work differ slightly, Chinese continentalists often invoke his famous declaration that “whoever controls central Asia controls the world island [the Eurasian continent]; and whoever rules the world island controls the world,” using the quotation liberally to buttress their own arguments.⁸³

Unsurprisingly, their views run directly counter to those of sea-power advocates, revealing a very diverse range of thinking about Chinese geostrategy. At the same time, differences in perspective provide an ideal opportunity for a contest of ideas. In 2007, a vigorous intellectual debate over the merits of sea and land power broke out into the open. Professor Ye Zicheng of Beijing University touched off the controversy, publishing a series of articles that year denigrating the role of maritime power in propelling China’s rise while touting the importance of a landward orientation for long-term Chinese strategic success.⁸⁴ Ye argues forcefully that “land power can exist without sea power, but sea power cannot exist without land power development. Hence, land power remains the most basic geopolitical form and element, and the Eurasian continent remains the main international political stage today.”⁸⁵ Mackinder would surely have applauded these words.

According to Ye, all other forms of geospatial power, including air, sea, space, and cyberspace power, should serve China’s continental prowess.⁸⁶ In policy terms, a landward orientation would require China to further develop its interior territories and foster strategic partnerships with other major land powers of Eurasia, including Europe, Russia, and India. At the same time, an inward-looking posture would eschew maritime competition in the Pacific with the current naval hegemon, the United States, thus further benefiting Beijing’s peaceful rise.⁸⁷

In another prestigious journal, Ye provides some historical perspective for his hypothesis. He claims that land powers, in contrast to sea powers, tend to exhibit greater staying power in the international system. Ye contends:

The influence of those countries that have developed mainly through land power has lasted much longer [than sea powers]. Continental space has very great cohesion; once it forms it can endure, and the fruit of land power development can permanently sustain a country’s development and status.... The influence of China, this land power, can last intermittently for up to 1,000 years. Although China is both a sea and land power, in essence, China’s natural features and history and culture have determined that it is mainly a land power. The fact that China has been divided without being separated, has not been wrecked despite weakness, and has always been a unified country for several thousand years is closely related to its land power status.⁸⁸

Ye then offers several cautionary tales of great powers that overreached their comparative geopolitical advantages. Russia’s failed attempt at sea power during the Cold War and Japan’s abortive bid for continental hegemony in World War II exemplify the hazards encountered when mastering unfamiliar geospatial terrain. For Ye, American difficulties in Afghanistan and Iraq in recent years suggest that the United States, too, has “gone far beyond the strategic potential given by its natural endowment.”⁸⁹ In other words, China should stick to what it knows best, that is, land power, lest it err as egregiously as previous great powers.

Liu Zhongmin similarly looks to the past for guidance, interpreting Imperial Germany’s naval rivalry against Great Britain as a stark warning to the Chinese leadership. For Liu, the “moral of the story” for Beijing is clear: “Germany is a country whose territory included both land and sea and its most important geopolitical strategic interests were more dependent on the land. By excessively worshipping and developing the sea power, Germany went against its regional advantage, and made enemies both on the land and at sea, which aggravated its disadvantage as a country whose territory included both land and sea and resulted in double injury. In the end, Germany’s challenge to the British maritime hegemony was thoroughly defeated.”⁹⁰ Drawing a parallel to China’s predicament today, Liu believes that Beijing too is a hybrid power saddled with both landward and seaward strategic responsibilities. Given these multidirectional pressures, China is in no position to focus exclusively on building a powerful navy. As Liu states emphatically in another article, “China’s comprehensive power simply cannot help China to establish U.S.-style global sea power.”⁹¹ Thus, it must avoid the fate of Imperial Germany by shunning futile attempts to challenge U.S. maritime hegemony—attempts that could trigger a needless, unwinnable rivalry.

The centrality of land power obviously carries important resource- and force-structure-related implications. Zhang Minqian acknowledges that China must devote attention to all dimensions of geospatial power, including the air, sea, space, and information domains. However, since “resource allocation in fact cannot be inputted in equal volume but must somewhat highlight the focal points, land power is the primary option for China, which has the characteristics of being mainly a land power.”⁹² In other words, the Chinese leadership must selectively prioritize its military investments to maximize China’s geographic advantages on land.

For Cheng Yawen, Beijing should modernize its land forces to cope with internal security challenges and external threats from neighboring continental powers. According to Cheng, “the basic way of preserving land security is air mobility and joint air-land combat, which is less complex than joint land, air, and sea warfare, and in addition helps to bring into play the traditional strong points of China’s armed forces.”⁹³ In this alternative future, China would possess powerful military forces capable of prosecuting land warfare in a manner resembling the U.S. Army’s Air-Land Battle Doctrine, a concept developed during the last phases of the Cold War. Architects of the doctrine envisioned using information-based precision strike weaponry lavishly to compensate for the quantitative inferiority of American and allied forces to the Soviet Army in the European theater of operations.

For some analysts, including Ye himself, Beijing would not necessarily suffer a land-bound fate even if it kept its continental orientation. A powerful land force could still effectively control events at sea, particularly littoral seas washing against the Chinese mainland. Ye argues that technological advances have greatly extended the reach and enhanced the striking power of shore-based aircraft and guided missiles while increasing the vulnerability of blue-water navies to land-based assets. Joint land, air, and sea forces could collectively “produce sufficient deterrent power to protect most of China’s coastal waters and all its coastal regions.” Most important of all, according to Ye, “If the land power (army, ground-based missiles, ground-based air force) on the Chinese homeland is sufficiently strong, it will suffice to control the situation in the Taiwan Strait.”⁹⁴ Interestingly, this assessment conforms largely to the current Chinese military buildup across the strait.

Reflecting the tremendous intellectual ferment in China about geostrategy in general and sea power in particular, Ye’s and others’ works elicited an energetic riposte from critics. Renmin Haijun, the official outlet of the PLA Navy, published a direct rebuttal to Ye’s writings. Lu Rude, a former lecturer of the Dalian Naval Academy, argues that Professor Ye’s analysis is out of step with China’s strategic realities. Rebuking his narrow geographic conception of sea power, Lu contends that “the establishment of sea power is the natural extension of national strategy toward the sea, and the core issue of maritime activities. It is related to multiple fields such as politics, economy, diplomacy, technology, law, and the military. It determines the rise and decline of a nation’s maritime affairs and its strengths and weaknesses. It is a matter of urgent importance to a nation and not a competition between ‘land power’ and ‘sea power.’”⁹⁵ Lu is unabashedly Mahanian in his depiction of sea power as an expression of a nation’s grand strategy. More importantly, he inveighs against the notion that the choice between land and sea power is mutually exclusive. He treats this as a false choice. Ni Lexiong, one of the most prolific and vocal neo-Mahanians in China, also objects to Ye’s analysis. Ni is particularly skeptical of Ye’s assertion that China can dampen the geopolitical sources of competition with the United States by facing landward. For Ni, the opposite outcome is equally likely: weakness at sea could leave China open to aggression and bullying from the sea.⁹⁶

An even more forceful repudiation of land-power proponents elevates China’s seaward turn to the grand, world-historical level. Lu Ning declares sweepingly:

The transformation of contemporary Chinese society, in terms of its viewpoint on sea power, is the evolution from an internally oriented economic form of a traditional farming civilization to an externally oriented economic form of a modern industrial civilization relying on sea lines of communication.... [This transformation] is the basis of a historic about face in China, from its traditional advocacy of land power to the modern advocacy of sea power. Beyond that, it opens up a distinct, historic path by which China can achieve a national resurgence from “continental civilization” to “maritime civilization” in the 21st century.⁹⁷

These are breathtaking claims indeed. The notion that national destiny and greatness are inextricable from sea power is unmistakably Mahanian. It is also noteworthy that the arguments put forth by competing schools of thought are often tinged with historical determinism. Whether confidence that China’s future will unfold in linear fashion is genuine or mere posturing is unclear.

In a far more conciliatory analysis, Professor Li Yihu of Beijing University calls for a dual-pronged strategy that leverages both land and sea power. “In handling sea-land relations,” he advises, “we should not be biased toward one and neglect the other, nor should we assign absolute equality between the two.”⁹⁸ Nevertheless, he takes issue with the confidence expressed by continentalists, such as Ye, that land power is enough to safeguard China’s maritime interests. Li asserts that land power alone is inadequate to protect the “main thoroughfares of the Pacific economic rim, international navigation routes, and strategic points” along the Chinese littoral. Thus, “China’s economic development and national security is premised on the strategic problem of sea power development.”⁹⁹ Concurring with Li, Senior Colonel Feng Liang, a professor at the Naval Command College, urges Beijing to “persist in placing equal weight on land and sea to face its security demands.”¹⁰⁰

Second, this discourse is a key indicator that sea-power theory is being “socialized” in academic and policy circles. The two communities look to each other for guidance, spurring what appears to be a virtuous cycle of intellectual interaction and advancement. The resulting improvement in the quality of strategic thought and the attendant growth in scholarship on nautical affairs promises to serve as a useful metric, helping external observers assess the extent to which sea-power theory has gained policy traction. From a historical perspective, the extensive and rigorous debate in China represents a healthy departure from the unquestioning embrace of Mahan’s writings in Imperial Germany and Imperial Japan. Beijing may thus learn the right lessons, rejecting the bellicose navalism that so obsessed leaders in Berlin and Tokyo. If so, the prospects for a cooperative maritime environment in Asian waters will brighten considerably.

Third, the intellectual struggle over ideas offers insights into the often-overlooked cultural and social dimensions of strategy. In the West today, scholars pay scant attention to geopolitics, depicting the field as hopelessly outdated and irrelevant in this age of globalization and interdependence. They tend to downplay the role of geography in international politics and, in the process, to transpose their own worldviews to other powers. Yet the literature review cited here indicates that a significant portion of the Chinese academy is moving precisely in the opposite direction.

These divergent trends dovetail with the rise of a postmodern maritime perspective in the West and the emergence of a neo-Mahanian mentality in Asia, two trends aptly captured by Geoffrey Till. What this implies for the future of Western-Asian encounters at sea remains unclear. But the apparent gap between Western and Chinese assessments of geospatial affairs suggests that the potential for mutual misunderstanding and misperception is ever-present and may become more acute over time. What seems axiomatic about sea power to Western capitals may not be for Beijing. It thus behooves Western strategists and policymakers to avoid the temptation to mirror-image and to vigilantly question deeply held assumptions about the seas that may not be shared in China.

Strategic theory, in short, gives Westerners an instrument to track China’s maritime rise, complementing more traditional techniques of net assessment. If the dominant school of Chinese scholars and seafarers continues ignoring the cooperative strands of Mahanian thought, mistaking his writings for (or misrepresenting them as) bloody-minded advocacy of naval battle, Chinese strategy will incline toward naval competition and conflict. Conversely, a China whose leadership accepts the deeper understanding put forth by more thoughtful analysts—and fully grasps the logic governing Mahanian theory—may prove less contentious. Western observers should keep sifting through Chinese strategic discourses and official statements in an effort to ascertain where China’s Mahanian turn may lead. America’s strategic longevity in Asia could depend on it.

A MAHANIAN PHILOSOPHY FOR CHINA

TAKING STOCK OF THE SURROUNDINGS

CHINA’S DEFENSE WHITE PAPERS AND NAVAL STRATEGY

MAO’S ACTIVE DEFENSE STRATEGY

WHAT KIND OF MAHANIANS ARE THE CHINESE?

COMPETING SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT

CHINA’S NAVAL-INTELLECTUAL COMPLEX