Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Scenarios include the collapse of North Korea or an inter-Korean war, a possible struggle
with the United States over Taiwan, and acts of piracy or terrorism that conceivably impede
China's merchant fleet access to the Malacca and other Indonesian straits. There are, too,
China's territorial disputes over the likely energy-rich ocean beds in the East and South Ch-
ina seas. In the former, China and Japan have conflicting claims of sovereignty to the Sen-
kaku/Diaoyu Islands; in the latter, China has conflicting sovereignty claims with Taiwan,
the Philippines, and Vietnam to some or all of the Spratly Islands, and with Vietnam over
the Paracel Islands. (China also has other serious territorial conflicts in the South China Sea
with Malaysia and Brunei.) Particularly in the case of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, the dis-
pute does carry the benefit of providing Beijing with a lever to stoke nationalism, whenever
it might need to. But otherwise it is a grim seascape for Chinese naval strategists. For look-
ing out from its Pacific coast onto this First Island Chain, they behold a sort of “Great Wall
in reverse,” in the words of Naval War College professors James Holmes and Toshi Yoshi-
hara: a well-organized line of American allies, with the equivalent of guard towers stretch-
ing from Japan to Australia, all potentially blocking China's access to the larger ocean.
Chinese strategists see this map and bristle at its navy being so boxed in.
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China's solution has been notably aggressive. This may be somewhat surprising: for in
many circumstances, it can be argued that naval power is more benign than land power.
The limiting factor of navies is that despite all of their precision-guided weapons, they can-
not by themselves occupy significant territory, and thus it is said are no menace to liberty.
Navies have multiple purposes beyond fighting, such as the protection of commerce. Sea
power suits those nations intolerant of heavy casualties in fighting on land. China, which in
the twenty-first century will project hard power primarily through its navy, should, there-
fore, be benevolent in the way of other maritime nations and empires in history, such as
Venice, Great Britain, and the United States: that is, it should be concerned mainly with
the free movement of trade and the preservation of a peaceful maritime system. But China
has not reached that stage of self-confidence yet. When it comes to the sea, it still thinks
territorially, like an insecure land power, trying to expand in concentric circles in a man-
ner suggested by Spykman. The very terms it uses, “First Island Chain” and “Second Is-
land Chain,” are territorial terms, which, in these cases, are seen as archipelagic extensions
of the Chinese landmass. The Chinese have absorbed the aggressive philosophy of Alfred
Thayer Mahan, without having graduated yet to the blue-water oceanic force that would
make it possible for China to apply Mahanian theory. In November 2006, a Chinese sub-
marine stalked the USS
Kitty Hawk
and provocatively surfaced within torpedo firing range.
In November 2007, the Chinese refused entry to the
Kitty Hawk
Carrier Strike Group in-
to Hong Kong harbor, despite building seas and deteriorating weather (the
Kitty Hawk
did
make a visit to Hong Kong in early 2010). In March 2009, a handful of Chinese ships
harassed the American surveillance ship the USNS
Impeccable
while it was openly con-
