Table Of ContentCHINESE GRAND STRATEGY
AND
MARITIME POWER
CASS SERIES:
NAVAL POLICY AND HISTORY
Series Editor: Geoffrey Till
ISSN 1366-9478
This series consists primarily of original manuscripts by research scholars in the
general area of naval policy and history, without national or chronological
limitations. It will from time to time also include collections of important articles as
well as reprints of classic works.
1. Austro-Hungarian Naval Policy, 1904-1914
Milan N. Vego
2. Far-Flung Lines: Studies on Imperial Defence in Honour of Donald Mackenzie
Schurman
Edited by Keith Neilson and Greg Kennedy
3. Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars
Rear Admiral Raja Menon
4. The Royal Navy and German Naval Disarmament, 1942-1947
Chris Madsen
5. Naval Strategy and Operations in Narrow Seas
Milan N. Vego
6. The Pen and Ink Sailor: Charles Middleton and the King's Navy, 1778-1813
John E. Talbott
7. The Italian Navy and Fascist Expansionism, 1935-1940
Robert Mallett
8. The Merchant Marine in International Affairs 1850-1950
Edited by Greg Kennedy
9. Naval Strategy in Northeast Asia: Ceo-strategic Goals, Policies and Prospects
Duk-Ki Kim
10. Naval Policy and Strategy in the Mediterranean: Past, Present and Future
Edited by John B. Hattendorf
11. Stalin's Ocean-going Fleet: Soviet Naval Strategy and Shipbuilding Programmes,
1935-1953
Jiirgen Rohwer and Mikhail S. Monakov
12. Imperial Defence, 1868-1887
Donald Mackenzie Schurman; edited by John Beeler
13. Technology and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century and Beyond
Edited by Phillips Payson O'Brien
14. The Royal Navy and Nuclear Weapons
Richard Moore
15. The Royal Navy and the Capital Ship in the Interwar Period: An Operational
Perspective
Joseph Moretz
16. Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power
Thomas M. Kane
CHINESE
GRAND STRATEGY
and
MARITIME POWER
THOMAS M. KANE
University of Hull
R
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LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published in 2002 in Great Britain by
FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informabusiness
Copyright © 2002 Thomas M. Kane
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Kane, Thomas M.
Chinese grand strategy and maritime power. - (Cass series.
Naval policy and history; 16)
1.Sea-power – China 2. China – Strategic aspects 3. China –
Foreign relations – 1976 –
I.Title
327.5'1'00905
ISBN 978-0-7146-5282-5 (cloth)
ISSN 1366-9478
ISBN 978-0-2038-1514-4 (eISBN)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kane, Thomas M., 1969–
Chinese grand strategy and maritime power / Thomas M. Kane
p.; cm. – (Cass series – Naval policy and history, ISSN 1366-9478; 16)
Includes bibliographical rerferences and index.
ISBN 0-7146-5282-2
1.Sea-power – China – History. I. Title. II. Series.
VA633 .K36 2002
359'.00951 – dc21
2002018815
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced
into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher
of this book.
With love to my father and mother, Norman E. Kane and Jean M. Kane.
Warm, clear-sighted and educated. People who understood freedom and
managed to achieve it. Parted only by death. From them I learned to think,
to write and to accomplish. My greatest teachers and my closest friends.
Page Intentionally Left Blank
Contents
Series Editor's Preface lX
Acknowledgements Xl
List of Abbreviations Xlll
1 China to the Sea 1
2 The History of Chinese Seapower 15
3 Principles of Chinese Seapower 33
4 Enter the People's Republic of China 53
5 The Twenty-first-Century PLAN 68
6 The Diplomacy of Chinese Seapower 108
7 Conclusion 139
Bibliography 146
Index 155
Page Intentionally Left Blank
Series Editor's Preface
This book establishes beyond doubt that China is building up manttme
power in all its dimensions. The main units of its sea-going Navy are
expanding in number, reach and military capacity. China's fishing and
merchant fleet is now huge, and its leaders are developing the shore-side
infrastructure to match.
Thomas Kane shows that while these developments may be relatively new
in contemporary terms, they actually fit into the pattern of centuries rather
more easily. It has often been remarked that the Chinese navy of the period
AD 1000-1500 was almost certainly the world's largest and technically most
advanced maritime force. After this period, though, China failed to keep
abreast of contemporary technological advances (especially in the radical
transformation brought about by the development of naval artillery). This
simple fact is a salutary reminder that the exclusive association of maritime
thinking with Western experience, and largely British and American
experience at that, can be profoundly misleading. In his exploration of
Chinese maritime thinking, Thomas Kane implicitly hammers this vital point
home.
Investigating a navy also often offers a window into the internal
development of the country that it is designed to defend. A navy illustrates
the country's social and economic strengths and weaknesses; more to the
point perhaps, it provides a means of assessing the strategic and international
perspectives of the country's leaders.
This is the main reason why so many people are interested in Chinese
maritime thinking. China will be pivotal to strategic developments in the
Asia Pacific in the twenty-first century and it is hard to exaggerate the
attention with which its many neighbours look for clues as to its future
intentions in their area. Moreover, the fact that the on-going disputes over
the South China Sea and with Taiwan are primarily maritime in nature
reinforces the centrality of naval developments to this kind of sometimes
fevered investigation.
In this book, Thomas Kane offers a calm and dispassionate review that
will be of interest both to maritime analysts and to the world's China
watchers. He concludes that China is indeed building up its maritime power,
with the intent of propelling itself once more among the foremost of the
great powers, and ends with some stimulating reflections on how the West
and China's neighbours should respond to this development. In strategic
terms, the Asia-Pacific region is overwhelmingly maritime in orientation.
The economies of the area, now so crucial to the effectiveness of the world
economy as a whole, depend absolutely on sea trade. Marine resources, fish,
oil and gas are essential to the prosperity of many countries in the region.
