Protection of the sea lanes has been an integral part of the national strategy for the states which rely on extensive networks of maritime routes for trade. For many developing and developed economies, energy is a major component in their trade mix. Thus countries that fail to meet their energy needs through domestic production are forced to view maritime security as an integral part of their energy security. The world’s second largest economy in GDP and the largest in manufacturing, China, too, relies heavily on sea lanes of communication (SLOCs) for its trade in goods and commodities, including key hydrocarbon resources.

In response to the nation’s growing dependency on the foreign-controlled sea routes for the transportation of energy resources, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has embarked on an extensive modernization program of the PLA Navy (PLAN, or the Chinese Navy). In this respect, the Chinese Navy has begun to acquire and develop new concepts, technologies and platforms that are better suited to the requirements of contemporary national security which include sea lane protection through extensive monitoring and anti-piracy efforts, rescue and escort missions.[①]

China’s naval modernization program has led to a growing skepticism in the international society which sees the country’s maritime build-up as a showcase of its assertiveness and a prelude for naval domination.[②] Military experts express concern about the rapid increase in China’s military budget that has enabled Chinese military to invest in new technologies, procure advanced platforms at a relatively higher production rate and reinforce its area denial and force projection capabilities.[③] Beijing has been criticized for the ambiguity of its defense budget, its conduct in the peripheral waters, its evolving ambition toward projecting naval power, and its alleged tendency to challenge the US naval supremacy in the Asia-Pacific and beyond.[④] But how valid is such skepticism? Are these worries justified?

This paper offers a counterargument to the widespread claim that China’s naval modernization constitutes a potential threat to the freedom of navigation, in particular, and to regional and global peace, in general. It maintains that China’s view of the use of force differs radically from the conventional application of naval power. Although Beijing actively seeks to achieve greater naval capacity, the underlying motivation is not maritime dominance but protection of vital economic interests. Energy security, in this respect, appears to be a crucial medium-to-long-term goal in China’s naval development.

In this paper Alfred T. Mahan’s theory of sea power is revisited to analyze the conceptual development of China’s maritime strategy. Considered as the foundational framework of the largest naval power, the United States, Mahan’s theory enables to comparatively investigate China’s naval development. Hence, in this essay a detailed analysis is made on the conceptual development of China’s blue water navy with the aim of understanding its present-day maritime strategy and shedding light on its future development.

I. The Mahanian Theory of Sea Power

Considered as the founder of the theory of sea power, Alfred Mahan stressed that the aim of naval strategy was to “find support and increase, as well in peace as in war, the sea power of a country.”[⑤] He held that “a key function of a navy was to blockade and strangle enemy sea commerce.”[⑥] According to him a powerful navy would ensure the safety of overseas trade, protect allies and subdue enemies. Thus he argued for a strong navy to protect international trade in peace times and deny adversaries maritime access to vital resources through blockades in war times.[⑦] He advised that the US Navy should achieve naval superiority since sea power capability was a “formula for great power status and world influence.”[⑧]

Mahan believed that trade by sea was an easier and more profitable method than trade by land. A country’s rise into a great power status was unthinkable unless it established a formidable sea force. He argued that large battle fleets were necessary to control world oceans, and the surest way to defeat a potential adversary was to restrict its movement in the seas. For this purpose, he suggested maintaining “select bases on islands or continental peripheries” rather than invading a landmass in toto.[⑨]

Mahan offered five primary conditions that affect the sea power of nations: geographical position, extent of territory, number of population, character of the people and character of the government. Of these five indicators, he placed the greatest emphasis on geographical position, pointing out that, if a country managed to be geographically near to the sea lanes where global trade is concentrated, hence naval bases, then it could carry on “successful commerce-destroying.”[⑩] He, thus, underlined the relationship between naval power and control of sea routes to be used as a weapon to strangle an adversary’s economy.

To a great extent, Mahan’s ideas shaped US maritime strategy to seek hegemonic control over world’s strategic sea ways.[11] Although the US revised its naval policy at the end of the Cold War, it has “never separated itself from Mahan’s sea power theory.”[12] In the same vein, the rise in China’s national strength and the corresponding modernization of its navy in recent years has led many in the West to question whether China endorsed a similar Mahanian strategy as a framework for its national maritime policy.[13] As the debate continued, two differing views have emerged.

The skeptics concur that turning China into a Mahanian power has indeed become “a fixture in nation’s strategic discourses about the sea for at least a decade.”[14] However, they hold that the conceptual development of China’s navy is still in its infancy. Therefore, it is too early to conclude that the Chinese Navy will attempt to dominate oceans the way the US Navy does presently.[15] The pessimists, on the other hand, are convinced that China’s naval strategy is poised to be hegemonic.[16] Beijing has been on a fast track to become a full-fledged maritime power in true Mahanian sense.[17] Accordingly, they anticipate China to become more willing to mobilize its navy proactively to address a number of issues, including the Taiwan question, disputed territories and geopolitical and economic security. As such, they argue, these core interests could not be addressed satisfactorily unless the Chinese Navy was transformed into a Mahanian sea force.[18]

Both skeptics and pessimists see that China’s maritime development is historically and geo-strategically conditioned.[19] First of all, Beijing knows that China suffered five major invasions by colonial powers because the country was too weak to defend its coastal waters. Second, dependent heavily on sea-based trade, its economic development would be in danger if China left the security of maritime routes to others. Third, China’s maritime environment remains contentious: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are major naval powers and enjoy the US security umbrella. Also, Southeast Asian nations such as Vietnam and the Philippines continue to reinforce their naval forces, especially submarine warfare capabilities. Finally, majority of the disputes China has with its neighbors are maritime-based. In the face of these realities, China is expected to continue to invest heavily on the navy and, inspired by a vision akin to Mahan, ultimately seek maritime domination.[20]

However, the conceptual development of China’s navy and historical precedent suggest otherwise. As this research argues, Mahan’s theory is inapplicable in the case of China’s naval modernization. Still, the erroneous pessimism toward China’s naval development seems to encourage the U.S.[21] and its major regional allies in the Asia-Pacific[22] to consolidate their capabilities and accelerate containment efforts against China.[23] As it is explicitly voiced in the report prepared by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, the U.S. government worries that “China’s increasingly advanced and adaptive naval capabilities… could undermine U.S. interests and security in the region.” In response, the report advises U.S. government to enhance its engagement in the region and “demonstrate that it has the capacity and resolve to actively shape – and offset – China’s growing naval capabilities.”[24] It follows that a wrong perception of China’s naval development might lead to a larger concentration of the U.S. military in the Asia-Pacific, encourage a region-wide arms race, motivate China’s neighbors to group together around the U.S. in its containment efforts against China, and thus endanger regional peace and stability.

II. China’s Naval Strategy: Energy Connection

Currently world’s second largest economy in nominal GDP, China has grown increasingly dependent on foreign energy resources over the past two decades.[25] The last ten years witnessed a dramatic change of position between the world’s leading energy consumers. In 2000, China was the third largest energy user in the world, taking up 10.8% of global energy consumption, superseded by the EU (18.4%) and the U.S. (24.7%). In 2011, China rose to the top spot with a 21.3% share of the total global energy consumption.[26] In the country’s energy mix, oil is the second largest resource after coal with over 20% share.

According to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) oil market report, China consumed about 9.6 million barrel/day (mb/d) of oil in 2012 whereas it produced only 44% of it. Over half of the imported oil came from the Greater Middle East region. As for the future consumption, the BP Energy Outlook 2030 estimates that China’s dependency on the oil from the Middle East and North Africa will grow to 80% of its total import in two decades. Domestic consumption in China, on the other hand, will increase by 7 million mb/d to 17 million mb/d in 2030, surpassing the U.S.[27]

China is the largest energy consumer in the world and the second largest consumer of oil after the U.S. In its effort to satisfy domestic energy demand, Beijing has become increasingly reliant on foreign sources. It is estimated that, by 2035, China’s domestic use will rise to 15 mb/d and the nation’s net oil import will account for more than 80% of its total consumption. Currently at around 50%, the share of the Greater Middle East is expected to reach 70% of China’s total import by 2015. Out of the seven largest energy partners of China, five are located in the Middle East where 64% of the world’s proven oil reserves are located. Persian Gulf, in this respect, looms large in China’s energy prospects because of the vast amount of proven oil reserves the region holds.[28]

From realist perspective, energy is a strategic commodity since it is scarce and geographically concentrated, thus its trade is vulnerable to external threats.[29] Once securitized, energy is no longer a factor of market only but also of geopolitics which includes, among others, transportation. And this is where China’s naval development overlaps decidedly with its energy security. That is to say, the rising dependence on foreign energy resources from the Middle East pushes the issues of availability and accessibility to the forefront of China’s strategic calculations, rendering maritime-based energy security an inherent component of national security.[30]

Although China’s energy relations with big oil producers in the Middle East vary, the security concern remains the same as virtually all of the oil imported from the region goes through critical chokepoints and sea routes (through the Strait of Hormuz, Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, Straits of Malacca, and into the South China Sea).[31] The U.S. Navy enjoys a complete control over these sea-lanes of communication (SLOCs) with its ability to stop the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Aden to the ports in China.[32] Apparently, Beijing is not comfortable with such overwhelming foreign domination over strategic sea passages[33] and is aware that “energy issues and maritime interests [are] vital elements in [the] nation’s economic health… and [thus the Chinese Navy] is tasked with energy security as a mission.”[34] Accordingly, unlike the mainstream conviction that China’s naval modernization is essentially Mahanian, the driving force in Beijing’s efforts toward building a strong navy is indeed the nation’s vulnerability to external threats to its sea-borne trade, including trade in energy.

III. Doctrinal and Technological Transition of the Chinese Navy

Although the share of foreign trade in China’s economy has been declining, it still takes up a big space in the nation’s GDP.[35] As the reach of the Chinese economy goes further away from the Chinese mainland and near waters, so does the reach of its navy. As a result, the PLA Navy and PLAN Air Force (PLANAF) have gone through fundamental reforms both conceptually and materially. Doctrinal changes lead to developments in new technologies and capabilities. For a long time, however, the PLAN’s strategic objectives remained confined to the nation’s near waters and included missions such as protecting China’s territorial interests in the South and East China Seas, enforcing China’s sovereignty under international law over the 200-mile maritime exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and ensuring anti-access area denial (A2AD).

Yet, with the rise in China’s economy and global reach, the Navy began to assume new responsibilities beyond its traditional zone of influence. These responsibilities now include providing humanitarian relief in disaster and conflict zones, protecting and evacuating Chinese nationals in times of crisis in foreign lands and, more importantly, securing the strategic sea routes and chokepoints through which most of China’s international trade, including its trade in energy, is carried out. Although these new imperatives require a blue-water navy capable of force projection away from the Chinese mainland, none of them suggests that China seeks dominating any of the trade routes, much less using oceans to wage wars in distant lands.[36] The doctrinal development of the Chinese Navy lends credence to this observation.

Modern China’s early leaders acknowledged the need to develop a viable maritime strategy for the nation. From Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, Chinese leaders stressed the importance of maritime security and development. During Mao Zedong’s era, China was mostly internally-focused and its naval strength was at best meager. In case of a war, Chairman Mao’s strategy was to “draw an adversary’s warships deep into China’s territorial waters” as China had limited capacity to wage a war in the open seas.[37] Similarly, under Deng Xiapoing, the Chinese Navy was still no match to challenge powerful navies in the country’s near waters. Hence, Deng’s elaborate foreign policy strategy of non-confrontation and avoiding outright claims for regional leadership was also applied to the nation’s maritime strategy.[38]

Under Jiang Zemin, Chinese Navy went through a major transformation. China’s first air-craft carrier project, a crucial step toward a blue-water navy, was initiated in the mid-1990s.[39] However, China’s naval program took off during Hu Jintao’s presidency. In November 2012, speaking at the CPC’s 18th Congress, President Hu stated that “we should enhance our capacity for exploiting marine resources, resolutely safeguard China’s maritime rights and interests, and build China into a maritime power.” Besides his emphasis on the PLAN’s role to protect China’s maritime interests, Hu stressed that a strong national defense was imperative for China to address the “interwoven problems affecting its survival.”[40] Finally, along the lines of his predecessors, President Xi Jinping stressed the “unison between a prosperous country and strong military.”[41] Thus China’s maritime strategy evolved as the country’s ability to develop and operate new technologies grew.

Ever since its establishment in 1949, the Chinese Navy’s primary doctrine has undergone three major revisions. Preceded by traditional coastal defense strategy, the Navy’s defense concept was based on near-seas active defense until the mid-1980s.[42] The coastal defense doctrine required that the PLAN focus on defending the Chinese coast against enemy fleets as an auxiliary to a larger war to be fought on land. The revised strategy, on the other hand, covered broader sea areas and required a more sophisticated navy that “would operate more independently and have its own geographical bounds of operations.”[43] Essentially, the near-seas active defense concept sought to enable China to protect its interests within the EEZ, defined as the territories encompassing “the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, South China Sea, the seas around the Spratly Islands and Taiwan, the areas inside and outside the Okinawa Island chain as well as the northern part of the Pacific Ocean.”[44] Yet, due to China’s long coast (about 18,000km), the Navy’s capacity to protect a broad geography remained a huge challenge. Thus, maritime defense was concentrated on the critical passages to keep a potential adversary from a land invasion via these vulnerable sea ways.[45]

China’s naval policy underwent a third major reform in the mid-1990s. Especially from the early 2000s, a growing number of strategists began to voice China’s need for a new defense concept focusing on a broader maritime geography.[46] Informed by global developments throughout the 1990s and the nation’s increasing dependency on sea-based trade,[47] the PLAN began to gradually modify its concept from one of the protection of China’s near-sea interests to the defense of both near- and far-seas interests.[48] This new strategy was introduced by Jiang Zemin, who stated that the Chinese Navy should “in the long run pay attention to enhancing the far-seas defense and operations capabilities,” and further emphasized by his successor, Hu Jintao, who noted that the PLAN should “make the gradual transition to far-seas defense, enhancing the far-seas maneuvering operations capabilities.”[49]

Although the official Chinese opinion on the future deployment of the PLAN as a blue water navy varies, there is a consensus that China needs to increase its strategic maritime reach to protect its economic interests in distant lands.[50] Indeed, as China becomes more integrated into the global economy and its industrial capacity and energy consumption grows, the weight of sea trade in the overall economy increases.[51] Consequently, China’s maritime security doctrine remains in flux with the underlying objective of transforming the Navy into a modern force capable of force projection.[52] For such a plan to materialize, the Navy needs to achieve blue-water capabilities.[53]

Still, China’s naval rise remains economics-driven and its primary objective is the protection of the sea routes through which oil, natural gas and other strategic commodities are shipped. [54] Building a blue water capable navy, in this respect, is both an obligation for Beijing due to its growing economic interests and a natural outcome of its rising national power. It is widely held in Beijing that “in the new century, it is a must-taken road for the navy to go to blue waters.”[55] In the words of President Xi, China’s naval strategy is to “improve its ability to safeguard its maritime rights, while at the same time adhere “to the path of peaceful development.”[56] Hence even though the Chinese naval development is indisputably open-sea oriented, the motivation is not to dominate seas and threaten others but to protect the nation’s vital economic interests.

IV. China’s Future Naval Strategy:
Modernization-Oriented toward Protection of
Sea Lanes and Chokepoints

China’s geostrategic approach to energy security draws largely on its particular national conditions and the larger international context. Domestically, urbanization and the transition of industry from coal have led to a growing dependency on crude oil and natural gas.[57] Since over half of China’s energy comes from foreign sources, sea lane security has become a vital strategic priority.[58] The international aspect of China’s energy dependency requires its naval forces to achieve operational capability in high seas.[59] Therefore security of maritime trade is the most essential component of China’s contemporary naval development because economic security cannot be left to others’ volition.[60]

The 7000-mile sea lane between China and the Persian Gulf determines the main direction of Beijing’s contemporary far-seas development.[61] International shipping routes from China’s mainland through the Indian Ocean and several key chokepoints such as the Hormuz, Aden, Malacca and Taiwan Straits are of great strategic importance. For this reason, the Chinese Navy has embarked on extensive modernization to re-structure itself around aircraft battle groups. The PRC also adopted the string of pearls strategy to establish a number of bases from China’s east coast to the ports in Pakistan and Djibouti that, once fully operationalized, would enable the PLAN to more effectively patrol and monitor shipping routes extending along the Pacific and Indian Oceans.[62]

Today, China’s energy policy is securitized and the Chinese Navy is one of the main actors, if not the leading one, to ensure that energy flow would continue unhindered. Accordingly, the PLAN, which is originally “assigned a role in modernizing and expanding China’s energy infrastructure,” has also begun to serve as the guarantor of sea trade via naval platforms and base agreements.[63] However, at the present time, the Chinese Navy is not fully capable of safeguarding the flow of resources. Consequently, Beijing carries out a two-pronged strategy that involves comprehensive naval modernization on the one hand, and search for alternative sources such as Russia and energy rich Central Asian countries, on the other.[64]

As the article published in the leading Chinese naval journal Modern Navy holds, “whoever controls the oil can also control the lifeblood of other countries’ economic development.”[65] Therefore, in the words of PLAN commander Wu Shengli and Political Commissar Hu Yanlin, “to maintain the safety of the oceanic transportation and the strategic passageway for energy and resources… we must build a powerful navy.”[66] Clearly, China’s present-day naval strategy differs radically from that of the U.S. in that it does not seek sea domination but only protection of China’s vital economic and strategic interests. The PLA Navy is tasked with moving “beyond its previous mission of safeguarding national survival interests to protecting national development interests,” which is, as opposed to Mahan’s theory, does not prescribe a desire to dominate world sea routes and challenge and intimidate others.[67]

Conclusion

Clearly, the perception of China’s naval build-up in most of East Asian countries and in the U.S. has been negative.[68] If this perception persists, China’s neighbors in East Asia would be further encouraged to reinforce their strategic maritime assets. Such development could lead to an arms race and the possibility of fatal encounter in the congested waters of East and South China Seas would increase. On the other hand, The United States, already the most powerful naval force in Asia-Pacific, might accelerate its charm offensive across the region from Japan to Australia, galvanizing the existing military agreements and establishing new ones to squeeze the strategic grip on China’s maritime frontiers.

Nevertheless, external negative perception of China’s naval intentions would not necessarily divert China from executing vital national development objectives, including naval modernization. If further challenged and blockaded by the U.S. Navy in its maritime periphery, China would dedicate more resources to develop asymmetric warfare capabilities and build its navy around carrier battle groups. A stronger navy would be “capable of operating far beyond the Chinese coast for a long period of time…, directly threaten the United States” and protect China’s economic and strategic interests in high waters.[69] A confrontation between the US and Chinese navies in the Pacific or Indian Oceans would have substantial implications for global economic security.

Obviously, Beijing might attempt to make its intentions clearer if the present strategic posture fell short of convincing international actors for one reason or another. In this respect, establishing better communication channels, promoting confidence building measures and upgrading military-to-military relations would help erase some of the persisting preconceptions and reduce tensions. Regionally, Beijing could talk directly to its counterparts under the ASEAN Regional Forum and East Asia Summit. Globally, China and the U.S. could hold multilateral meetings with other powers such as Russia and India to clarify their positions and address mutual concerns.

Yet, realistically speaking, some perceptions of China will likely linger simply because of the phenomenal growth in its national power, which creates systemic fluctuations. The fact is. that being the largest manufacturing and trading economy in the world, it would be illogical to anticipate China to endanger its core national interests simply to appease others.[70] As far as naval development is concerned, what is needed might be to seek a strategic balance so that neither China’s maritime security nor its overall image as a benign great power is compromised. Chinese policy makers and strategists could make greater effort to distinguish between securitization and militarization of energy, underlining that China’s naval modernization is related to securitization of maritime routes. In this respect, further academic effort is called for to present the ample historical and doctrinal evidence of Beijing’s peaceful development strategy so that the skeptics would be convinced of China’s core foreign policy ideology as based on harmony, non-intervention, and mutual respect.

Source of documents：Global Review