China's Maritime Power and Strategy

The following sections are included:

• Foreword
• Preface
• About the Author
• Contents

The following sections are included:

• Strategic Perspectives to Review China's Maritime Power
• Maritime Power Thought and Practices of Modern China
• Inner Foundation of China's Maritime Power

The Opium War ushered China into an era when it was forced to withstand the impact of the violent Western maritime civilization and was pushed to sea. However, being a long-closed agricultural society with a feudal system of corruption and authoritarian rule hindered China's national strategic transition. This hindrance was reflected in not only the monarchs' lag in response to maritime crises, but also the maritime defense strategies centering on the will and interests of themselves.

Around the 1900s, Alfred Thayer Mahan, a U.S. Navy strategist, put forward the modern naval strategy and sea power theory based on his research on naval history. His theory immediately caught the eyes of the world and became an important thought that influenced the two world wars and countries like the U.S., India and, the U.S.S.R. after the Second World War.

No country can develop without a peaceful strategic environment. No country can enjoy real peace without national strength. In the current international politics, peace and development are reciprocal causations of each other. As the ultimate goal of building a peaceful environment is to achieve better development, development, rather than peace, is more related to the essence of China's maritime power strategy.

Western geopolitician D.W. Meining, in his description of Asia's geopolitical history, considers that the military invasion and economic plunder of Asia by Western colonists, though cruel, have caused the geopolitical characteristic of this ancient region to shift from being land oriented to becoming sea oriented. Since the 16th century Western powers started to invade Asia with maritime forces. Their invasion lasted for quite a few hundred years. Until the 20th century, some major regions of Asia retained the geopolitical characteristic that sea powers seized the control of continental countries in Asia through their control of seas and oceans surrounding the continent. Despite Japan's temporary occupation of the West Pacific region during the Second World War, the maritime power of Asia's surrounding waters has always been in the hands of external sea powers ever since the establishment of a post-war world order and a bipolar system…

The East Asia island chain has separated China's maritime geographical environment into two major areas, namely, offshore waters and oceans. Within the area of offshore waters, China is confronted with the strategic tasks of settling maritime disputes and maintaining a sound relationship with neighboring countries. In oceans, China must ensure the security of the Indian Ocean shipping lane on which its economic security hinges and coordinate with the global maritime strategic system dominated by the U.S. Japan has explicitly taken China as a strategic imaginary enemy in the implementation of its strategy of “building itself into a maritime power”, and India has always regarded China as its primary strategic rival. Therefore, China needs to put the strategic competition with Japan and India into perspective before its maritime power strategy can be integrated into the U.S.-dominated global maritime strategic system.

Taiwan is the geopolitical key point of China's maritime power strategy. Prior to 2008, “adhering to the One-China policy” had become the catch phrase of foreign leaders who visited China. This indicates that the Taiwan issue is of such importance to China that it has exerted a profound impact on China's foreign relations. However, different from Hong Kong and Macao, the Taiwan issue is not only placed in a more complex international context, but also prone to being affected by the complicated popular sentiments and political trends of the island. Thereby, on the one hand the Taiwan issue is the internal affair of China; on the other hand, due to the complexity of international affairs, the Taiwan issue has to be examined from the macro perspective of international strategy. And how to deal with the Taiwan issue is a major task which cannot be avoided in the implementation of China's maritime power strategy.

The South China Sea is not only the largest waters over which China has sovereign rights, but also a strategic base while China is utilizing its sea power in offshore waters to exert influence on far seas. However, unlike the Taiwan Issue, China's policies on the South China Sea have not been widely supported by the international community. Even in these days, Chinese scholars and officials are still questioned on many international occasions about the exact definition of the nine-dotted line in the South China Sea. Disputes in this region involve “five countries or six parties” and are critical to China's sovereignty over islands in the South China Sea as well as its relationship with Southeast Asian countries. In 2009, the U.S. Asia-Pacific Rebalance Strategy and the drastic escalation of disputes in the South China Sea changed the overall environment for China to build itself as a maritime power. As a result, powers outside this region took advantage of this situation to implement “Divide and Conquer” Policy to China and its neighboring countries. The South China Sea issue not only has a bearing on whether China is able to achieve its maritime sovereignty, but also has a direct impact on the strategic surroundings and environment of China if it wants to become a maritime power.

From the perspective of overall strategy and geo-strategy, the Korean Peninsula and the Indochina should be incorporated into China's offshore security zone if China wants to build itself up as a maritime power. If the neighboring countries of these two peninsulas are allied with countries that are hostile to China or with powers outside the region, then the security of China's offshore waters will be deteriorated, incurring a passive state similar to that after the War of Jiawu. In other words, the capital in the north and ports for foreign trade in the south will be directly exposed to and threatened by outside powers. Through development of diplomatic, economic, and political relations, the relations between China and countries in these two areas will be strengthened, which will help to lay a basic land geostrategic foundation for China to build itself up as a maritime power. Only with such a land geo-strategic foundation, will China be able to become a maritime power in the future…

The following sections are included:

• Conclusion
• Index