By James Goldrick

China’s powerful new warships have attracted much coverage in the global media in recent years. Far less attention has been devoted to the evolution of the strategic culture which must underpin the country’s drive to develop a first-class navy. The changes will need to be profound. Despite China’s navalists’ attempt to summon history to their aid with narratives of the treasure voyages of Admiral Zheng He in South East Asia and the Indian Ocean, China’s outlook has been fundamentally continentalist over practically its entire history. External economic engagement through the Silk Road and maritime South East Asia was beneficial, but never existential. China’s economy was self-sustaining and its primary security interests – and threats – usually related to its northern and western borders. This was an outlook that successive governments found impossible to change. Largely because of this rigidity, the century of western and Japanese intervention from the sea was marked by China’s repeated failures to make an effective maritime response.

China must now balance its continental concerns, which remain extant (and complex), with the requirements imposed by a new dependence on the maritime domain. China’s recent history means that it will always have an eye on the need to protect itself against attack from the sea, but there is much more to China’s vulnerability than potential invasion or bombardment. Most of China’s global trade moves by sea. The realities of transport costs mean this will remain the case no matter how successful the “Belt” element of its grand economic plan may be. Furthermore, China is critically dependent on the seaborne import of raw materials, notably energy, from Middle East oil to liquefied natural gas. Finally, China’s global engagement, particularly in Africa and the Middle East requires regard for the safety of its nationals in unstable regions as well as protection of its investments. The “One Child” policy has created a concern for the well-being of individuals that may be new to China’s government but has certainly been evident in its readiness to conduct evacuation operations as far away as the Mediterranean and cooperate in the search for the lost MH 370 flight in the Indian Ocean.

At the same time, China’s concerns for its hinterland have not diminished. Its security is dependent upon the stability of the many states with which it shares borders and on achieving sufficient economic growth in its western provinces. Neither the security problems nor the economic challenges involved will be easy to resolve. The recent tensions with India over the two nations’ territorial claims are just one example of the difficulties which can arise, sometimes with little notice.

All this is not new and Chinese naval strategists have been looking hard at the work of the nineteenth century navalist and geo-strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan. He is famed for analysing the elements of British sea power and its contribution to Britain’s rise to global dominance. Mahan, however, was interested in not only why an island nation such as Britain should develop in such a way, but why its greatest rival, France, did not. France, a continental power as well as a maritime one, had to balance its efforts between the land and the sea in a way that Britain did not, and Mahan had much to say about the nature of its failure to do so.

The lesson of France is important because China’s strategic planners must attempt to ride the two horses of continental defence and protection and assertion of its maritime interests. In the maritime domain, this is reflected in the parallel efforts to develop a force structure on one hand capable of preventing enemy forces from approaching China by sea and on the other able to conduct classical sea control and power projection force across the wider region – and even globally. If the resources continue to flow, the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLA-N) will aim for surety that it can dominate the maritime approaches to China, a task that will be managed in conjunction with the other arms of the PLA, such as the air force and the rocket force. It will continue to develop fast, missile equipped coastal surface craft, as well as diesel-electric submarines. Emergent technology, not only in anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles, but in the form of unmanned surveillance and attack vehicles will be a key element of this effort, as will be long range and space-based sensors. Ironically, China’s “asymmetric” efforts to create an “anti-access, area denial” capability in the western Pacific will rely upon much the same systems of such sensors and long-range communications that the United States has developed over the last century to support its own operations. The truth is that a Sino-US conflict in the western Pacific would be as much a contest between and against networks as one of purely kinetic effects.

For Taiwan, the irony may lie in the fact that the desire to deploy China’s naval power in distant seas rather than the need for coastal defence is making the mainland look at the island in a new way. Until this point, the default Chinese military attitude, understandable in the wake of the “century of shame”, has been to possess the ability to deter and defeat any would-be seaborne invader. Now China is looking to the sea as its access to the globe, reunification will have a new urgency. Control of Taiwan would give China passage to deep water and the Pacific Ocean without the need to transit through waters under the surveillance of other powers.

Artificial island building in the South China Sea reflects both continentalist and maritime thinking, but it is possible their mixture will go too far in the eyes of the region. The danger is that the continentalists who genuinely regard the new installations as being a “Great Wall at sea” for China’s defence will make the mistake of thinking that the seas that lie between them and the mainland are Chinese territory. If this assumption is taken to its logical conclusion by attempting to eject other nations from commercial or military operations within the area encompassed by the “Nine Dashed Line”, the consequences for China’s relationship with the other states bounding the South China Sea would be disastrous, however strong China’s historic claims to its islands and features may be. This would also have profound implications for the way that China is regarded in the wider region and, arguably, globally.

The reality is that this step is unnecessary. The military intent of achieving a much greater level of awareness across the sea by setting up the artificial islands as surveillance platforms and bases for surface and air assets is well on its way to being achieved. In a high intensity conflict, the “unsinkable aircraft carriers” may well become “immovable targets”, but their utility in a wide range of contingencies, as forward bases for long range operations and as very public statements of China’s growing maritime power is undeniable. This is not the only case in which China’s maritime thinkers have the challenge of developing within the national policy-making elite an understanding of just how the sea is different from the land, but it is probably the most important.

An associated challenge is the need to be sensitive to the reactions of other nations in the employment of maritime power. For a country which sees itself as the historical victim of the aggressive use of naval power, China has on occasion been surprisingly obtuse in its employment of its new capabilities. Publicly justifying the deployment of submarines into the Indian Ocean under the flimsy pretext of anti-piracy operations not only alienated India but also took away much of the credit associated with the long running surface deployments which have significantly assisted the international effort to suppress piracy in the western Indian Ocean. Similarly, while China has made much of its view that foreign intelligence gathering operations are illegal within its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), this has not stopped the PLA-N dispatching its own intelligence ships into other nations’ EEZs. The PLA-N also missed some early opportunities to prove itself in disaster relief, notably when the Philippines were hit by tornadoes, although its recent deployment of a hospital ship to the South Pacific suggests the lesson is beginning to be learned.

The level at which the force structure of the PLA-N finally settles remains an open question. A rule of thumb may be that China would like to possess, with comparable levels of weapons and sensors in its major combatant ships, a front-line navy approximately half the size of the U.S. Navy (USN). In achieving such a goal, much will depend, as sustained naval development always does, on the ability of China’s economy to support the expanding needs of its new navy. As it acquires so many sophisticated capabilities, the PLA-N must come to terms with the scale of the overheads involved and this may cause intense budgetary conflicts within the PLA as well as the government as a whole. The real costs of naval power do not lie in ship construction, but in operation and sustainment over the long term and this must be increasingly apparent to senior decision makers. The aircraft carrier program alone requires not only a network of air bases ashore, together with the design and manufacture of naval aircraft, but also a support system that will allow China’s carrier groups to conduct protracted operations at long range. The new 45,000-ton fast replenishment ship which was commissioned in 2017 is just one element of the matrix of capabilities that will be needed. Even providing spare parts at short notice becomes a highly resource-intensive operation when it is conducted at oceanic distances. This may be one factor in the apparent change of attitude to overseas bases on the part of the Chinese government. Even with expensive facilities such as that being developed in Djibouti, however, the PLA-N will have to pour much more money into its fleet train if it is to sustain forward deployed forces at the appropriate levels.

Despite such realities, development of the carrier force will continue as a pillar of the PLA-N’s intended power projection capabilities. The Chinese carriers should be regarded as emulation of American capabilities to achieve strategic effects rather than a direct military challenge to the USN. They are part of China’s competition with the United States, but they will not be critical to any conflict with the Americans. The PLA-N will understand Chinese naval aviation is a very small child by comparison with the American effort. But it is also aware that its carrier battle groups will be a formidable proposition for anyone else and thus potentially an important tool for strengthening China’s strategic position within the region. It will not have escaped the PLA-N that carriers have a wide utility in addition to the projection of power. The USN response to the 2004 tsunami, which saw 25 ships assigned to help the affected areas in South East Asia within ten days, is a good example. Amongst those units was an aircraft carrier, whose ability to function as a mobile airfield was critical to the provision of aid to remote areas.

A key test for the PLA-N will be the success of the second indigenous-built carrier. The first unit, allegedly named Shandong, whose trials started earlier in 2018, is largely based on the Liaoning and shares the limitations of that ship’s lack of catapults. The second unit will be a Chinese design from the keel up. Whether it employs steam catapults or the electromagnetic systems which the USN is having so much trouble bringing into service in its latest carrier, the new ship will take much longer to build than Shandong and even longer to bring to an operational level of capability. Its design inevitably carries much greater risks than the modification of the eight truck-loads of plans which came with the Liaoning that resulted in the Shandong. If the new Chinese design proves successful, however, the carrier force is likely to round out at six units by the early 2030s. This would provide the capability to have one battle group deployed in distant waters at all times, plus the ability to surge to two such deployments for a significant period. The principal operating area for the deployed carrier will almost certainly be the Indian Ocean, but the recent history of Chinese deployments to northern Europe and other parts of the world suggests that the PLA-N will occasionally send a group much further afield. This may even include the Caribbean if China wishes to push home to the United States the message of its potential global reach. Such a message, albeit only using destroyers and frigates, has already been given to northern Europe with a task group deployment to the Baltic and associated Sino-Russian naval exercises.

The force of major surface combatants will probably remain at the present number of 70 to 80, but with a very different size and capability mix. At its summit by 2030 will be up to a dozen of the new Type 055 cruisers – a much more accurate label for their size and role than destroyers – with the remainder being made up of a mix of air warfare destroyers and anti-submarine frigates. Both destroyers and frigates will possess significant general capabilities in addition to their specialist role. The PLA-N seems to have learned the lesson that over-specialisation limits the flexibility with which units can be employed in unexpected contingencies.

The amphibious force will continue to expand to provide up to six expeditionary groups to allow similar deployment patterns to the carriers – at least one group always available for deployment and the ability to surge to a second. The recent decision to expand China’s marines confirms the PLA’s interest in developing its long-range intervention capabilities, although the existence of Taiwan will be an important factor in the continuing development of platforms and landing forces which have utility closer to home.

There will be a price to pay. At a time when the USN is facing many problems, despite its mature force structure, the PLA-N has its own challenges. Developing a full range of contemporary force elements to their full potential is and will not be that easy, particularly as the Chinese have few external sources of support. The Russians can help (for a price) in some areas, but they have their own strategic agendas and will be loath to provide China with the latest technologies in which they have maintained a lead. No matter how closely the PLA-N has watched the way that the USN works, meeting the requirements involved in putting in place, manning and financing the constellation of tactical development, experimentation, doctrine writing, training, and maintenance organisations that are needed to keep a great power navy running will be a huge challenge. The effort will certainly be critically dependent on the continuing ability of the government to pay for it. If China’s economic growth stalls, then it is likely that the sea control and power projection effort will be an early victim.

The fitful progress of the submarine arm is a good example of the problems the PLA-N must be facing. Neither the nuclear ballistic missile submarine, nor the nuclear attack submarine program have progressed quickly. While the US Department of Defense has for some years assessed the Jin class SSBN as constituting “China’s first credible, sea-based deterrent”, only four units are yet operational. Other nations have maintained continuous underwater deterrent patrols with only four units, but the PLA-N at its present state of expertise would require at least five and preferably six boats to be sure of maintaining such an effort.

Similarly, the PLA-N has only five operational nuclear attack submarines, nearly 45 years after the first such unit commissioned. More are under construction and the operational employment of these units has been much more ambitious in the last few years, including deployments to the Indian Ocean. The submariners are clearly eager to gain experience in other environments than the littoral of China. Nevertheless, the scale of the nuclear attack submarine (SSN) building programme so far compares oddly with the effort devoted to surface forces. It suggests that China is still struggling with the quality of its nuclear power plants and the associated noise levels, as well as many other elements of submarine design and construction. Much has been claimed by the PLA-N in recent months about the technological breakthroughs which have been achieved by Chinese scientists and engineers and this may well be the case. Indeed, the apparently slow progress with the submarine fleet could be because the PLA-N is furiously trialling new systems and technologies with the aim of embarking on new large-scale building programmes only when it can be sure that the necessary technical advances have been achieved. A capable nuclear attack submarine force will be an important contribution to sea control and power projection, as well as possessing significant potential to support continental defence. Both the carrier groups and the missile submarines will want the protection and support of accompanying SSNs. The PLA-N’s target is likely to be 25 or more boats, but this may take even longer to achieve than a mature carrier force.

In sum, China has achieved extraordinary advances in naval capability in the past decade. The PLA-N cannot yet claim supremacy in either its defensive mission or its power projection efforts and the realities of the strategic situation mean that it may never be able to do so. Even aside from the United States, nations such as Japan wield formidable capabilities at sea. The PLA-N still has much to put in place and much to learn before its new force elements can be considered mature and remains vulnerable to the limits on its budget that may result from an economic downturn or the assertion of the interests of other elements of the PLA who do not give the maritime domain the same priority. Above all, if it is to make a constructive contribution to China’s rise as a global power, China’s navy needs to understand the full meaning of the words of an American president spoken at the outset of the growth of American naval power and learn to speak softly, even when carrying a big stick.