“Maritime strategy” is best defined in general terms, perhaps nothing more specific than “matching necessary resources with attaining national maritime goals.” In fact, Admiral J. C. Wylie denigrated the concept of a single, coherent maritime strategy, stating “the requirement is for strategies of depth and breadth, flexible and adaptable, which by intent and by design can be applied to unforeseen situations.”2 Alfred Thayer Mahan also was well aware of the complexity of warfare, which “could not be encompassed by any system of theory.”3
Furthermore, a modern maritime strategy must involve air, space, cyber, sea, and land forces operating jointly throughout the maritime environment, from the littoral to blue water and from subsurface to space. These are all objectives of repeated People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) exercises.
Imbibing From the Mahanian Well
Current Chinese maritime strategic thought is influenced by the classic strategists Alfred Thayer Mahan and Julian Corbett. Admirals John “Jacky” Fisher, Ernest King, Arleigh Burke, J. C. Wylie, Elmo Zumwalt, Sergei Gorshkov, Liu Huaqing, and former U.S. Secretary of the Navy John Lehman also are influential. Few of these put forward a formal maritime strategy, but their organizational and leadership contributions made a strategic difference in their nation’s maritime narrative.
And while they probably never saw an ocean, Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz are strategists who deserve consideration when discussing Chinese maritime strategy.
Sun Tzu’s focus on deception, for instance, is certainly germane to the 21st-century emphasis on electronic and information warfare, expressed in innumerable reports of PLAN exercises. Sun Tzu also may be credited, or blamed, for what appears to be a dangerous weakness in Chinese maritime strategic thought: an unrealistic belief in the ability to control unintended escalation during an incident at sea, as evidenced in various crises since 1950. Whereas Clausewitz (“friction”) and Mahan certainly understood the uncertain nature of events at sea, Sun Tzu argued that one can plan for almost any eventuality in war.4 This characteristic may be bolstered by the PLAN’s lack of significant operational conflict for more than three decades.
As for Clausewitz, Beijing’s propensity for “teaching a lesson” when employing military force fits into his discussion of two types of war, limited and absolute. PLA involvement in Korea in the early 1950s was a disaster in terms of personnel losses, but is considered a “victory” because of the continuation of the North Korean state, a point not well enough known by American policy makers; and the PLA’s performance in Vietnam in 1979 was, even by Deng Xiaoping’s own measure, poor—but considered to have taught Hanoi a “lesson” about actively opposing Chinese policies.5
Chinese strategists acknowledge Corbett and Mahan’s strategic views emphasizing the importance of economics and trade, lines of communication at sea, and employing naval power to attain national-security aims. These are currently framed by the “near seas”: the Yellow, East China, and South China seas; the “middle sea,” including much of the Philippine Sea; and the “far sea,” the waters outside the Second Island Chain, a line drawn through the Kuriles, Japan, and the Bonin Islands, the Marianas Islands, Palau, and the Indonesian Archipelago. Wylie’s comment that sea power’s purpose is “the actual establishment of control on land” applies to China’s determination to establish sovereignty over numerous land features in the East and South China seas.
China embraces the concepts of command of the sea, sea denial, and sea control, as well as having developed impressive naval and commercial maritime forces and infrastructure. The relationship among national naval power, economic development, and international relations underlies Chinese maritime strategy,
Mahan’s emphasis on the need for overseas naval-support bases is appreciated by the PLAN as it conducts deployments to the Gulf of Aden. While the “string of pearls” is more verbiage than reality, China is solidifying its relations with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and other Southwest Asian nations. For instance, it is currently negotiating with Djibouti to join several other nations in establishing a logistics facility in that country.6
The 19th-century Western onslaught on China brought home to many officials the necessity of modernizing their country’s military might, including its navy. Beijing succeeded in organizing and equipping a modern navy, but it foundered in wars with France and Japan, failures resulting largely from the absence of adequate training, unified command, common doctrine, and a clear strategy.
The People’s Republic of China emerged in 1949 with no navy to speak of; its initial maritime force was imported from the Soviet Union, as was its initial maritime strategy, the “Young School” of the 1920s. This defined a naval role largely limited to supporting the army’s operations ashore, a view that changed only slowly over several decades.
Mao Zedong wrote in 1953, “We must build a strong navy for the purpose of fighting against imperialist aggression.” In 1979, Deng Xiaoping called for “a strong navy with modern combat capability,” although emphasizing its role in coastal defense. Jiang Zemin urged the navy in 1997 to “build up the nation’s Great Wall.”7 Hu Jintao urged the Central Military Commission in 2004 to “accelerate the transformation and modernization of the Navy . . . and make extended preparations for warfare in order to make greater contributions to safeguarding national security and world peace.”8 He later noted the importance of maritime border issues, Taiwan’s status, and “protection of China’s expanding national interests.”9
Most recently, President Xi Jinping’s enunciation of a “China Dream” has engendered articles calling for a strategy of “outward-oriented military power,” to include “limited global military power . . . capable of protecting distant sea lanes.”10
Liu Huaqing’s Vision
China’s most influential flag officer, Liu Huaqing, played a role similar to that of the Soviet Union’s Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, who instituted dramatic changes in maritime strategy during a long tenure as Soviet navy commander. Gorshkov no doubt influenced his Chinese counterpart, but Liu confronted significant obstacles in the 1980s, including a longstanding continental-security perspective, internal PLA resource battles, and domestic politics; these had to be overcome through the implementation of a maritime strategy reflective of Arleigh Burke and John Lehman.
Liu’s 1980s plan for modernizing China’s navy is usually described as occurring in three stages:
- By 2000, the PLAN would be capable of exerting sea control out to the First Island Chain, defined by the Kurile Islands, Japan and the Ryukyu Islands, the Philippines, and the Indonesian Archipelago.
- By 2020, sea control would be enforced out to the Second Island Chain.
- By 2050, the PLAN would operate globally, with aircraft carrier battle groups.
Liu’s most important achievement, however, was gaining civilian leadership support for the increased resources to develop a 21st-century navy. That fleet today exercises classic naval missions: presence, protection of seaborne trade, counterpiracy, noncombatant evacuation operations, deterrence, and preparing for joint warfare at sea in defense of vital national-security interests, including power projection ashore.11
These missions fall under the rubric of defending China’s “core interests,” which are defending “state sovereignty, national security, territorial integrity and national reunification, China’s political system established by the Constitution, overall social stability, and the basic safeguards for ensuring sustainable economic and social development.”12
“National reunification” obviously refers to Taiwan; “state sovereignty” and “territorial integrity” include the Xinjiang and Xizang (Tibet) provinces, but also include contested land features in the East and South China seas. If these latter are “core interests”—and since Beijing reserves entirely to itself the definition of that category—the application of a Chinese maritime strategy becomes more threatening.13
‘Complete, Comprehensive, and Systematic’
Representatives at the early 2012 National People’s Congress in Beijing vociferously criticized the lack of a maritime strategy, calling for the government to “formulate and promulgate a complete, comprehensive, and systematic maritime development strategy, with all the national political, economic, military factors being brought into consideration!”14
While Beijing has not published a formal maritime strategy, it has issued important documents addressing the maritime theater.15 These include the Defense White Papers, most recently the 2012 iteration, published in February 2013.16 For instance, the 2004 White Paper claimed “the Navy has expanded the space and extended the depth for offshore defensive operations.” The 2006 version then stated “the Navy aims at gradual extension of the strategic depth for offshore defensive operations,” which was followed by the 2008 White Paper’s statement that “since the 1980s the Navy has realized a strategic transformation to offshore defensive operations.” The PLAN’s strategic aim was described in the 2010 version as “in line with the requirements of offshore defense strategy. . . .”17
The 2012 White Paper described the Chinese navy’s role in a national defense focused on “safeguarding national sovereignty, security and interests of national development . . . tasked to guard against and resist aggression, defend the security of China’s lands, inland waters, and territorial waters . . . [and] safeguard its maritime rights and interests” pressured by the ongoing sovereignty disputes in the East and South China seas. Defending the security of territorial waters is repeated as integral to “National Defense Policy.”
China appears to be adhering to a mid-century goal for achieving a completely modern military, which means that the PLAN sees itself in 2014 as at the halfway mark in its overall modernization program.18
Beijing delineates defensive maritime-security zones in which it aims to prohibit foreign surveillance and reconnaissance activities or any other actions it finds objectionable. This provides the basis for a maritime strategy with legal, national-security, domestic political-stability, and fleet-composition components.
For instance, during the 2010 discussion of U.S. aircraft carrier deployments to the Yellow Sea following the sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson stated, “We resolutely oppose foreign military ships and aircraft coming to the Yellow Sea and other Chinese adjacent waters and engaging in activities that influence China’s security interests.”19 This view—combined with the aggressive actions against foreign fishing craft in the South China Sea during the past decade or more, and actions against U.S. surveillance aircraft and ships—points toward a view of “sovereign” waters far in excess of those delineated by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
‘Striking First . . . as Far Away as Possible’
Beijing’s creation of a large modern navy capable of operating in the 21st-century maritime arena is an achievement marked by three milestones. First was the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crisis; second the successive deployments of Chinese naval task groups to the Gulf of Aden; and most important, the success of Admirals Liu Huaqing, Shi, and Wu Shengli in creating a modern Chinese navy in a military dominated by the army.
This last factor appears to be changing in favor of the navy. First, China’s 2004 Defense White Paper stated, “The PLA will promote coordinated development of firepower, mobility and information capability, enhance the development of its operational strength with priority given to the Navy, Air Force and Second Artillery Force.” Second, at the Chinese Communist Party’s Eighteenth Party Congress in November 2012, President Hu Jintao emphasized that the other services would be playing a more important role in China’s military, asserting, “We should attach great importance to maritime, space and cyberspace security.” Third, General Xu Qiliang argued that “We should . . . lay stress on strengthening the building of the Navy, Air Force, and Second Artillery.” Then, in November 2013, a senior military-region commander stated that the PLA was going to become more balanced, with the army being de-emphasized in favor of the navy and air force.20 Finally, in January 2014, Chinese military analysts described a “new joint command system” reflecting “naval prioritization.”
Recent PLAN operations demonstrate that it is capable of impressive regional operations and can deploy 21st-century ships to far seas, although the strategic theory espoused in public by Chinese analysts is based on island chains, which does not fit with traditional naval strategic theory. However, the Chinese version of “defense” is an “active defense” concept that enhances the PLAN’s ability to defend the near seas. The mission is “to do all we can to dominate the enemy by striking first . . . as far away as possible.”21
Developing the strategic vision, as well as the doctrinal and operational capabilities to bring its new naval power to fruition, requires naval leadership capable of succeeding in the contentious national and military resource-allocation process. Admirals Shi Yunsheng and Wu Shengli appear to have fared well in that process, establishing the PLAN as a key element in China’s status as a major power.
A January 2012 assessment of “China’s naval rivals” focused on the U.S. Navy as “a strategic opponent of the Chinese Navy.” Japan was then highlighted as a more immediate concern, based on “naval hatred stretching over 100 years [over] Diaoyu Island [Senkaku Islands] sovereignty, maritime boundaries in the East China Sea, and the possibility of Japanese military interference in the Taiwan issue and the South China Sea.” Vietnam and the Philippines were listed as “local tactical opponents” and India as a “potential blue water opponent.” The analysis concluded that the “Chinese Navy now faces a maritime competition structure that involves a broad maritime region, great depth, and multiple opponents.”22
China is attempting to become both a continental and a maritime power, a difficult transition, rare in history. France, Germany, and Russia all failed to do so. A former U.S. commander of Pacific forces, Admiral Robert Willard, has opined that China “aspires to become a ‘global military [power]’ by extending its influence beyond its regional waters.”23 If China succeeds in deploying an effective, global navy, it will have beaten the historical odds.
In 1999, I wrote that “the PLAN required to carry out Liu Huaqing’s strategy would include task groups of missile-firing, power-projection capable ships supported by nuclear-powered submarines and tactical air power.” This force structure (Deng Xiaoping’s statement that “without air cover, winning a naval battle is out of the question”) is still nascent, but appearing on the horizon.24
That campaign is being guided by a de facto maritime strategy that indeed draws on the usual stable of classic strategists: Corbett, Mahan, Sun Tzu, and Clausewitz. China does, then, have a maritime strategy. Its success remains to be seen, however, and will in the final analysis depend on Beijing first solving its very significant domestic problems.
1. “Sailing on a Harmonious Sea: A Chinese Perspective,” Global Asia, vol. 5, no. 4 (Winter 2010), www.chinausfocus.com/peace-security/sailing-on-a-harmonious-sea-a-chinese-perspective/.
2. Ibid.
3. Jon Tetsuro Sumida, Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command: The Classic Works of Alfred Thayer Mahan Reconsidered (Washington, DC: The Woodrow Wilson Center, 1997), 113ff.
4. Scott Fitzsimmons, “Evaluating the Masters of Strategy: Comparative Analysis of Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Mahan, and Corbett,” Innovations, vol. 7 (2007), www.ucalgary.com/innovations/files/innovations/Fitzsimmons-EvaluatingtheMastersofStrategy.pdf.
5. See Shu Guang Zhang, Mao’s Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War, 1950–1953 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995); Mark A. Ryan, David M. Finkelstein, and Michael A. McDevitt (eds.), Chinese Warfighting: The PLA Experience Since 1949 (Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, 2003); Peng Guangqian and Yao Youzhi (eds.), The Science of Military strategy (Beijing: Military Science Publishing House, 2005); Edward O’Dowd, China’s Military Strategy in the Third Indochina War: The Last Maoist War (London: Routledge, 2007).
6. “Djibouti Wants to Reinforce Military Cooperation With China,” Shabelle Media Network, 28 February 2014, http://allafrica.com/stories/201403010068.html.
7. Quoted in Cha Chun-ming, “Chinese Navy Heads Toward Modernization,” Ta Kung Pao (Hong Kong: 11 April 1999), B6, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service-China (FBIS-CHI)-1999-0418.
8. Quoted in “Chinese President Meets Deputies for Military Meetings,” Xinhua, 7 December 2011, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2011-12/06/c_131291648.htm.
9. James Mulvenon, “Chairman Hu and the PLA’s ‘New Historic Mission,’” China Leadership Monitor, no. 27 (9 January 2009), www.fnvaworld.org/download/tibet-related-doc/Hu-PLAs-missions-2008.pdf.
10. “The China Dream on the Threshold of the Dream of a Strong Military,” Zhongguo Meng Shi Yui de Qinagjun Meng, quoted in David Cohen, “In a Fortnight,” China Brief, vol. 14, no. 3 (6 February 2014), www.jamestown.org/programs/chinabrief/inafortnightcb/.
11. See Bernard D. Cole, The Great Wall at Sea: China’s Navy in the 21st Century, 2nd ed. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2010), chs. 7, 8; David Liebenberg and Jeffrey Becker, “Recent Personnel Shifts Hint at Major Changes on the Horizon for PLA Navy Leadership” (Arlington, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, 7 February 2014), www.cna.org/news/commentary/2014-2-7-recent-personnel-shifts-hint-major-changes-horizon.
12. “China’s Declaration of Key Interests Misinterpreted,” Beijing Review, 26 August 2013, www.china.org.cn/world/2013-08/26/content_29824049.htm.
13. Michael Swaine, “China’s Assertive Behavior,” http://carnegieendowment.org/files/CLM34MS_FINAL.pdf.
14. Captain Bernard Moreland, USCGR (Ret.), former USCG representative in Beijing, interview with author. See also Lyle J. Goldstein, Five Dragons Stirring up the Sea: Challenge and Opportunity in China’s Improving Maritime Enforcement Capabilities, China Maritime Study No. 5 (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, April 2010).
15. See Fei Shiting and Chen Xiaojing, “Enrich and Strengthen the Nation Through Maritime Development—PLA Deputies to the NPC Call for Introducing a Maritime Strategy,” Jiefangjun Bao, 9 March 2012, OSC-CPP20120309787007.; RADM Yin Zhou, PLAN, statement in “China’s Maritime Strategy Being Tested Amid South China Sea Disputes,” Beijing Caijing, 24 October 2011, http://english.caijing.com.cn/2011-10-24/110914257.html; MGEN Luo Yuan, PLA, quoted in Russell Hsiao, “Military Delegates Call for National Maritime Strategy to Protect Expanding Interests,” China Brief, vol. 11, no. 4 (10 March 2011), www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=37629&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=7&cHash=79f56b556ae0003e6afc755934e1fa54.
16. China 2012 Defense White Paper, http://china.org.cn/government/whitepaper/node_7114675.htm.
17. I am indebted to Dr. Nan Li, of the Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute, and to Dr. Thomas Bickford, of the Center for Naval Analyses, for this discussion.
18. Dennis J. Blasko, interview with author. See also Blasko, “An Analysis of China’s 2011 Defense Budget and Total Military Spending: The Great Unknown,” China Brief, vol. 11, no. 4 (11 March 2011), www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%Btt_news%5D=37631&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=517#,UqTo_14aU00.
19. Chinese Foreign Ministry statement, www.mfa.gov.cn/chngxh/tyb/fyrbt/jzhsl/t714888.htm.
20. The author participated in the meeting with the military-region commander.
21. MGEN Peng Guangqian, PLA, Research on China Military Strategy Issues (Beijing: PLA Press, 2006), 248, quoted in Michael A. McDevitt, “The PLA Navy Anti-Access Role in a Taiwan Contingency,” (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 10 June 2010), 3.
22. Hai Tao, “The Chinese Navy Has a Long Way to Go to Get to the Far Seas,” Guoji Xianqu Daobao (Beijing), 6 January 2012, OSC-CPP20120109671003.
23. Quoted in Yoichi Kato, “U.S. Commander Says China Aims to be a ‘Global Military’ Power,” Asahi Shimbun, 28 December 2010, www.asahi.com/english/TKY201201270279.html.
24. Bernard D. Cole, “China’s Maritime Strategy,” in Susan M. Puska, ed., People’s Liberation Army After Next (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College, 2000), 296. Deng is quoted in John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai, “China’s Search for a Modern Air Force,” International Security, vol. 24, no. 1 (Summer 1999), 10.