China: Economic Supremacy to Maritime Power

Captain Joyjayanta Saharia

(The writer is a retired Navy officer and can be reached at jsaharia@rediffmail.com)

China has established itself as a global economic superpower and is still growing. It currently stands at second after the US with a GDP (nominal) in excess of 14 trillion USD. For an economy and industrializing nation like China, a potent and credible military force is an inescapable requirement and forms part of its core strategic planning.

Industrial development and economic growth are not exponential all the time, but have bottlenecks and stagnation. Increased cost of labour, depleting raw material, competition from neighbouring countries and a quasi-stable security environment in the region put multiple challenges to the Chinese planners. This necessitates dynamic redesigning of strategy, exploration and expansion of market (including sourcing of raw material), and, most importantly, building up a robust and credible Navy for its overseas operations and logistic lines. The doctrine on sea power professed by Alfred Thayer Mahan, an American Navy Captain and 19th-century historian, remains relevant even today and continues to form the basic philosophy of all present-day maritime powers. He believed that “sea power as source of global strength rests on three pillars: commerce, naval firepower and access to far flung bases”. Mahan was able to foresee that as global trade developed, great powers would need strong Navies to protect their interests.

Commercial and economic disputes of nations often induce military conflicts, which are no new phenomena. Build-up of the Portuguese, British, Spanish, French and Dutch Navies, and their battles at sea in the 16th to 17th centuries, were all linked to protection of their trade and overseas holdings. Looking back again, Japan’s story post Industrial Revolution has many lessons to learn. Industrial revolution started in Japan around 1890. Factories were built, infrastructure was developed, and by the beginning of the 20th century Japan was a major industrial power. It also concurrently focused on building a strong military establishment and soon became the third largest Navy of the world. It, however, had limited natural resources to sustain as an industrialized nation. It had limited supply of coal and scant quantities of oil, natural gas, rubber and other essential raw materials. This was the reason for which Japan attacked China in 1930, occupying Manchuria, followed by a full-scale invasion of China in 1937. In 1940, Japan went after the Southeast Asian countries, expanding its empire. Industrialized Japan and its growing population needed more oil, food and other resources. The Americans, who were the biggest supplier of oil to Japan at that time, warned Japan to withdraw or to face embargo. The Japanese responded with the attack on Pearl Harbour and rampaged almost the entire Southeast Asian region, including Burma, Singapore and the Philippines, which eventually led to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Now coming back to China, economic reforms in China began in 1978. And since 1980 it has remained one of the fastest growing economies in the world. In contrast, till 1990, the Chinese Navy, known as People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), was primarily a ‘Green Water Navy’, implying and indicating its role to provide only coastal defence with limited operational capability in the open sea or beyond far horizon. In 1990, China’s then President, Jiang Zemin, called upon to build a Navy to be “the motherland’s Great Wall at sea”. This was followed up by the next President, Hu Jintao, to transform the Navy to a “great maritime power”. The tensions which mounted in the Taiwan Strait in 1995-96 after deployment of two US Aircraft Carriers acted as catalyst in the PLAN’s modernization process. China reshaped its maritime doctrine to be capable of acting as an “anti-access force”, which can deter US intervention in a crisis or conflict in the Taiwan Strait area and alternately delay the arrival or reduce the effectiveness of the US Navy and Air Force.

The build-up and modernization of the Chinese Navy started with the procurement of large surface combatants and submarines from Russia. They acquired 12 kilo-class submarines and four Sovremenny-class destroyers armed with supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles. They also procured naval version of Sukhoi-30 fighters. China soon stepped into its own ship-building projects. Between 2000 and 2008, it constructed six destroyers of three different types, 16 Song-class and four Yuan-class dieso-electric submarines and two Type-093 Shang-class nuclear-powered submarines. The Chinese indigenous projects also included construction of Type-094 Jin-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, stealth frigates, large number of Missile Fast Attack Crafts and a large (20,000 tonne) Landing Platform Dock (LPD) for amphibious operations. In 2017, the Chinese sailed its first aircraft carrier (Liaoning) into Hong Kong harbour, accompanied by two guided missile destroyers, a frigate and two corvettes. Liaoning is a second-hand aircraft carrier which was salvaged from a Ukrainian yard and upgraded with new equipment and systems. China also has an ongoing project for the second aircraft carrier which is likely to join the fleet in 2021. It has thus, in a short span of time, evolved as the region’s largest Navy and is reported to be possessing more than 300 surface and sub-surface vessels; this includes around 60 submarines.

In the recently conducted International Fleet Review (April 2019) in the port city of Qingdao, to mark the 70th anniversary of PLAN, China showcased its naval armoury (including televised footage of their latest 10,000-tonne Type-055 destroyer and jets taking off from Liaoning), thus declaring its ambitions for a global maritime power.

In order to achieve the ‘Blue Water Navy’ status, with capability of operating globally across oceans, China has established its first overseas naval base at Djibouti and is contemplating to establish more. These overseas bases will facilitate refuelling, repair of deployed ships and submarines, logistics, medical support and also turn-around/rest and recuperation (R&R) of crews.

The growing maritime capability of China is a concern for its Southeast Asian neighbours. The monopolistic and intimidating attitude of China in and around the South China Sea (which is gradually getting extended to the Indian Ocean region) is also a cause of anxiety to many others. It is presently a cash-rich nation, which gives it the leverage to devise strategies and decisions at ease to counter obstacles. At the same time, its aggressive and predatory business approaches have become an irritant to many industrialized nations, especially to the US. The trade war between the US and China is simmering. While building up a potent and credible Navy is critical for any country to sustain and protect its overseas trade and operations, intimidation to and from competing nations tend to flare up conflicts, which act as retardants in the growth process. Considering this, a toned-down body language in terms of economic and military ambitions is desirable from China, which is, however, not foreseeable in the near future unless a dent is felt by the Chinese in its coffer or in its growth rate.