China’s naval ambitions

http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2008/09/chinas-naval-ambitions.html
Second chance at command of the oceans

Le Monde diplomatique.

Five hundred years ago the obvious contender for dominance of the world’s oceans was the Chinese imperial exploration fleet, which was technologically centuries ahead of all its rivals. But the emperor decided to turn the nation’s back on the sea. The Chinese will not make the same mistake twice
By Olivier Zajec

In 2006 China Central Television showed a documentary series, Daguo Jueqi (The rise of great powers) (1), which was immediately successful. It included interviews with historians and international leaders and was considered accurate enough to be bought by the History Channel and broadcast in the United States. The 12 50-minute episodes explained how the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, British, German, Japanese, Russian and American empires rose, prospered and fell. The man behind the idea, Beijing university professor Qian Chengdan, understands its popular appeal in his own country: “It’s because China, the Chinese people, the Chinese race, has been revitalised and is once again on the world stage” (2).

Daguo Jueqi looks at the maritime achievements of the major powers in their rise to global dominance. Whatever the population, size or territory of the originating country, its strategy was always to open to the outside world, control the principal sea lanes and deep-water bases, and master technology, naval action and influence. Those are the Chinese government’s new priorities, laid down in the 2000 Maritime High Technology Plan and the parallel rise of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).



Pragmatism and diplomacy
The documentary broke with decades of Chinese Communist Party historical ideology and revealed China’s current pragmatism as that of a rising power intent on avoiding the arrogant blindness that left it in a long period of weakness in the 19th century. To influence the world in a “harmonious and peaceful” manner (two key words used in current policy), to open China to the world – and the world to China – appears to be Hu Jintao’s present creed. In an unprecedented effort of naval diplomacy in 2007, Chinese warships visited French, Australian, Japanese, Singaporean, Spanish and US ports and took part in joint manoeuvres against the threat of piracy.

China’s soft-power ambitions should be put in perspective against the regional backdrop. There are also two major issues. One concerns China’s territorial claims on Taiwan and the extent of Chinese territorial waters in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ). If China were to satisfy these ambitions it would gain free access to vast areas of the Pacific Ocean and Southeast Asian sea lanes beyond the Indochinese peninsula. The second issue, now that China has become the world’s second oil importer, is the protection of its energy corridors. The territorial issue will be a determining factor for the present. Beijing has succeeded in settling land border disputes with 13 of its neighbours in a friendly manner (3). Only two neighbours oppose China openly: Bhutan and India. But, according to Loïc Frouart, of the French defence ministry’s strategic affairs delegation, “those 14,500 km of maritime borders represent many possibilities for potential crisis or friction. There are many unresolved conflicts” (4). China is claiming full sovereignty over 4m sq km of water.

The Chinese authorities would like to regain their hold on Taiwan “by force if necessary”. That remains the official stance, although the election in Taiwan of Ma Ying-jeou’s Kuomintang party has reduced tensions on both sides of the straits. Along with the rapid rise of the Chinese navy and the decline, however relative, in the tonnage difference with the US navy, China is using psychological as well as military means to accompany the developments that will lead to the peaceful return of Taiwan. That involves both dissuasion and enticement. The missiles aimed at the island, and the US attitude to them, prevent Taiwan from declaring independence, while the growing economic interdependence between Taiwan and the mainland is preparing citizens for a possible Hong Kong transfer.

However, Taiwan is not the only stone in China’s vast game of maritime Go. China is also in conflict with Japan over the Diaoyu Islands (Senkaku in Japanese) near Okinawa, which house a US military base. Tokyo insists that its EEZ extends 450 km to the west of the archipelago, which Beijing contests by claiming the entire continental plateau that extends its own territory into the East China Sea. It is no coincidence that this area contains a potential 200bn cubic metres of natural gas. China is also in conflict with Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia over the Spratly Islands (Nansha in Chinese) and the Pratas archipelago (Dongsha), and with Vietnam and Taiwan over the Paracel Islands (Xisha). China is contesting maritime borders in Japan and Vietnam and disputing fishing quotas with South Korea, Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Longstanding naval ambitions
We tend to forget that China has always been active in the region. In the 1950s the Chinese navy took back most of the small coastal islands controlled by Chiang Kai Shek’s nationalists. In 1974 it took advantage of South Vietnam’s defeat to occupy the Paracel Islands, and in 1988 seized the Fiery Cross reef close to the Spratly archipelago from the Vietnamese. All the countries in the region, once vassals and tributaries of the Middle Kingdom, fear Beijing’s naval ambitions.

In the 1980s the important feature of Admiral Liu Huaqing’s maritime strategy (5), before oil or fishing in the South China Seas, was to secure access to the high seas for the Chinese fleet. China needed to impose its presence to the west of a “green sea line” from Japan to Malaysia via Taiwan and the Philippines. The main contender is the Japanese navy, which China has already tested by repeated submarine incursions (including an incident with a Chinese nuclear submarine in 2004).

Now Beijing is attempting to break through this line and pass through the shallow waters of the East and South China Seas into the “blue water line” of a second basin from Japan to Indonesia via Guam, the US military air and navy hub in the West Pacific. The main obstacle to the projection of Chinese naval power as far as the deep blue line (patrolled by the US Seventh Fleet) is Taiwan. In January 2008 the Taiwanese minister of defence, Ko Chen-heng, denounced the Chinese navy’s activities in the Bashi Channel, a communications bottleneck between Taiwan and the Philippines.

Once Chinese has solved its deep-water access, the navy will be able to devote more time to securing Southeast Asia’s four energy corridors. The first carries oil tankers of under 100,000 tonnes from Africa and the Middle East to the South China Sea via the Straits of Malacca. The second takes giant oil tankers from the same production areas through the Sundra and Gaspar Straits (6), while the third leads from South America through Filipino waters.

The fourth is an alternative route from the Middle East and Africa between the Straits of Lombok and Macassar, the Philippines and the West Pacific before reaching Chinese ports. Malacca is the main stranglehold, with 80% of Chinese oil imports passing through the straits, making China vulnerable in conflict. It is diversifying its access by developing the rail networks connecting Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) nations, finalising the direct Chinese-Burmese pipeline between Sittwe and Kunming (7), assisting in the development of offshore natural gas production capacity in Southeast Asia (especially in Burma and Thailand), and even considering the construction of a canal across the Kra isthmus in southern Thailand, in a region threatened by separatist insurgencies.

Pearl necklace strategy
These projects are difficult and will only partly reduce China’s dependence on the corridors. The need to secure them against piracy and the ambitions (real or imaginary) of the US, Japan and India, has led China to reinforce its deep-water naval strategy. Beijing is building a “pearl necklace” of permanent Chinese bases along the shores of the Indian Ocean and the maritime routes to Malacca: Marao in the Maldives, Coco island in Burma, Chittagong in Bangladesh and Gwadar in Pakistan, while waiting to create coastal bases in Africa, now open to Chinese investment. China has no shortage of workers or funds to organise and maintain operational bases in allied countries. It even offers ships to those countries to protect their offshore oil (8).

Apart from the US, which believes the Pacific will be a major strategic area for the next 50 years, China has two serious rivals: India and Japan. India and China, the two largest countries in demographic terms, have long been wary of each other – not least, in India’s view, because China supports Pakistan over Kashmir and continues to supply Islamabad with weapons. India aspires to the same status as China (a regional power with a global vocation) and has maritime ambitions to match. Its fleet is growing and its stated strategic goal is to make the Indian Ocean its own sea. Beijing’s pearl necklace strategy is an intrusion.

To stake its claim, India is building two aircraft carriers, the first of which should be operational in 2010, while a third, second-hand from Russia, is being overhauled. India’s submarine fleet uses French technology (Scorpène submarines) of a superior quality to the Chinese equivalent. The two countries are in a mutual observation phase and studiously avoid any conflict. There has been recent progress in relations between the two navies and joint manoeuvres since the countries signed a strategic partnership in April 2005.

Sino-Japanese relations have been through a tense period. The Japanese fleet is powerful and more modern than the Chinese, and has taken part in joint manoeuvres with the US navy for years. But the conflict over the Senkaku Islands revealed a nervous country, encumbered by its post-second world war pacifist constitution, now criticised by a nationalist faction. Japan is undecided as to how to handle China. Nor are Japan and India alone in their concerns about Chinese pressure. Smaller countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore are rapidly strengthening and modernising their own fleets. They are afraid that, with the US bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chinese will hold sway in the region, and a passing situation may become permanent.

Shipyards work overtime
Chinese shipyards are seizing the opportunity and working flat out from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea. The naval bases, river ports, sea walls, protected submarine bases (including the new Sanya nuclear base on Hainan Island) are growing and modernising as befits a nation in economic boom, whose foreign trade depends 90% on sea routes. In 2006 China’s sea-related industries accounted for 10% of GDP and seven of the world’s 20 leading ports were Chinese. Chinese efforts have civilian as well as military goals. Along with the naval construction, the maritime high technology plan is financing parallel projects to consolidate the fleet’s autonomy, such as a satellite-based geopositioning system called Beidou, maritime surveillance systems and more shipyards.

In 1995 China became the world’s third civilian shipbuilder after Japan and Korea and is catching up fast. With its two gigantic enterprises, China State Shipbuilding Corporation and China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, China stands every chance of becoming the world’s largest shipbuilder by 2020. The Chinese national plan does not distinguish between civilian and military vessels and both are built in the same shipyards.

World tonnage ranking

The world’s eight leading naval fleets Tonnes
United States 2,900,000
Russia 1,100,000
China 850,000
United Kingdom 470,000
Japan 432,000
France 307,000
India 240,000
Italy 143,000

(Source: Annuaire des Flottes de Combat, 2008)

China’s fifth national defence white paper in 2006 (9) provided a framework for the maritime awareness that emerged in the early 1990s. It transferred priority from the army, which traditionally held pride of place, to the navy and air force. The CCP’s Central Committee and its powerful Central Military Commission, now have many more naval and air force officers (10). In 2007 these were nearly 25% of the military elite, compared with 14% in 1992.

No expense has been spared. China’s three fleets (the East Sea Fleet headquartered in Shanghai, the South Sea Fleet based in Zhanjiang and the North Sea Fleet in Qingdao), each have their own naval airbase with bombers and fighter planes. More modern systems have been delivered, such as the Luyang anti-aircraft destroyers, or the locally built Ma’anshan frigate, successor to the Jiangwei of the 1990s. China had more than 500 coastal patrol boats at the end of the 1970s; half remain in use today but the deep-water fleet has increased to 60 vessels (11).

A considerable effort has also been made in amphibious vessels with some hundred ships under construction to make Chinese ambitions in the Spratly Islands or Taiwan a reality. Minesweepers, ballistic missile patrol ships and new oil tankers are also on order. There is no shortage of foreign help, from Australian wave-piercing catamarans, to Russian Sovremenny destroyers and Kilo submarines, Italian and French combat systems and Dutch naval guns. China imports, copies, adapts and often, to the surprise of its suppliers, improves, the equipment it wants. In some areas such as electronic warfare, or the most efficient engines and onboard combat systems, China depends on foreign, especially Russian, supplies.

Key role of submarines
Submarines play a key part in China’s global maritime programme. Despite persistent rumours concerning the refurbishing of the Varyag, bought from the Russians and in a shipyard for years, China does not have a single aircraft carrier, and only modern submarines could hope to dissuade the US Seventh Fleet which still guards Taiwan from its bases in Guam, Japan and South Korea. The Chinese fleet is reputed to have five fast-attack nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) and one ballistic missile submarine (SLBN) reputed to carry between 12 and 16 nuclear missiles with a range of 3,500km. It has 30 diesel-electric submarines and more than 20 other submersibles are under construction.

The US Seventh Fleet is concerned by this arsenal and admirals are petitioning Congress and the White House, claiming that the Chinese submarine fleet will exceed the number of US ships in the Pacific by 2020. Influential people, such as US Congressman Duncan Hunter (12), have recently raised the issue. Chinese SSNs carried out more patrols in 2007 than in the preceding five years. These concerns are reflected in the Pentagon’s annual report on the strength of the Chinese military (13) but they need to be placed in perspective. No one really knows what the performance of the best Chinese submarines may be, and it is possibly poor.

The US navy has 53 modern SSNs, twice the number of any other nation, as well as 12 of the world’s 15 aircraft carriers, and an unrivalled anti-submarine air fleet. The last issue of the US publication Quadrennial Defence Review (14) is more subdued in tone and discusses cooperation rather than confrontation. The situation in the South China Sea is not a declared arms race but a variable geometry opposition between the Indian, US, Australian and Japanese fleets, and the Chinese and Pakistani fleets.

China’s maritime ambitions are the result of the frustration of a nation that should have gained world dominance during its first globalisation 500 years ago, but was usurped by western barbarians. China had mastered astronomic observation-based navigation and the compass, had invented the anchor, the printing of marine navigation charts, the capstan, the adjustable centre-board, and was probably building giant multi-mast ships with pivotable rigging (15). Their junks had watertight compartments and stern-mounted rudders. All these were innovations that would be perfected by the West and used to humiliate China.

During the Ming dynasty (1358-1644), China turned away from the high seas and its great 15th century expeditions, in the most amazing of which the eunuch-admiral Zhang He had led the emperor’s 300-strong fleet to explore the world’s oceans (16). Building ocean-going vessels became punishable by death. That mistake has been taken on board and the glories of the maritime past are now cherished. The official website for promoting China’s presence in Africa tells the story of Mwamaka Shariff Lali, a young woman from Lamu Island, Kenya – where Ming dynasty porcelain shards are built in to local constructions – who is, by oral tradition and appearance, a descendent of Chinese sailors shipwrecked on the island before China withdrew from the oceans. She was offered a free place at a Chinese university and invited to celebrate “Zheng He navigation day” in Jiangsu province, the departure point for the imperial fleet (17).

The US has increased initiatives for exchange and cooperation with the Indian and Japanese navies as well as the Chinese, in an attempt to control its massive expansion as best it can. The most recent US gambit was the 2007 Global Maritime Partnership Initiative, under which each ally, including China, was invited to contribute to a thousand-ship fleet to combat piracy. Yang Yi, the director of the National Defence University’s institute for strategic studies, was not convinced that China would accept such a proposition before identifying ulterior motives and longterm implications (18).

China wants to prevent anything from stealing its second chance in history to emerge as a global and sovereign maritime power. China has not forgotten the Opium War, nor the sack of the Summer Palace (19), and will no longer tolerate threats or constraints. It is taking precautions. Even though it is still a long way from surpassing the dominant US navy, it is guided by history and each new naval accomplishment acquires a symbolic value. In 1989 the first PLAN ship to visit the US was a training vessel. It was called the Zhang He.

Translated by Krystyna Horko

Olivier Zajec is a researcher at the Compagnie européenne d’intelligence stratégique (CEIS) in Paris

(1) See the home page for the series (in Chinese) on http://finance.cctv.com/special/C16 ...

(2) Joseph Kahn, “China, shy giant, shows signs of shedding its false modesty”, The New York Times, 9 December 2006.

(3) Afghanistan, Burma, Bhutan, North Korea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Vietnam.


(4) La Revue de défense nationale et de sécurité collective, Paris, May 2007.

(5) Liu Huaqing was also the first chief naval commander to make an official visit to the US in 1985.

(6) The Sundra Strait is between the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra, while the Gaspar Strait separates Bangka and Belitung islands, also in Indonesia.

(7) Sittwe is on the west coast of Burma and Kunming is a river port in Yunnan province, south China.

(8) In October 2007 China supplied Cambodia with nine patrol boats to protect its oil installations in the Gulf of Thailand. See Defense News, International Edition, Springfield (Virginia), 18 February 2008.

(9) The first Chinese white paper was published in 1998.

(10) See Li Cheng and Scott W Harold, “China’s new military elite”, China Security, vol 3, no 4,Washington, Autumn 2007.

(11) A ship is considered ocean-going from 2,000 tonnes.

(12) Duncan Hunter is a Republican Congressman (California) who regularly defends US industry and defence budgets.

(13) See www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/ 07052.... Many American and European analysts have condemned the alarmist tone of the report, without however, denying Chinese advances.

(14) The Quadrennial Defence Review (QDR) published by US Department of Defence, describes US defence strategy over a 20-year period and is updated every four years.

(15) UCLA Centre for Chinese Studies, www.international.ucla.edu/chi na

(16) Admiral Zheng He made seven sea voyages between 1405 and 1433. See Attilio Jesus, “China’s empire of exploration ”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, September 2005.

(17) The Chinafrique website, in English, French and Chinese, provides other edifying articles, such as “The Chinese Prime Minister shakes the hands of African AIDS patients”, “The happy life of a Congolese in Beijing”, “China has made me rich”, “Friendship first, trade second”, “China could never be labelled neo-colonial”, etc.

(18) China Security, op cit.

(19) The two Opium Wars, for the purpose of imposing the drug on China, were first led by the British alone (1839-1842) and then by a Franco-British alliance (1858-1860), which resulted in the sack of the emperor’s Summer Palace in October 1860. See Victor Hugo’s letter to Captain Butler reproduced in the Unesco Courier, November 1985.
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