Summary

In the naval power balance of the Asia-Pacific, three powers play fundamental roles: China on one side, Japan and the US on the other. In this context, China is upgrading the naval branch of its military, officially known as the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy). This article will examine China’s efforts to increase its maritime power by examining prominent aspects of the PLA Navy’s ongoing modernization efforts.

Background

There is an ongoing debate over who is balancing whom in Northeast Asia. In reality, everything depends on your definition of “balance of power.” Some say that China is upgrading its military capabilities to match the US-Japan alliance and create a real balance in the region, meaning a situation of equilibrium where both sides have the same strength; while others claim that the PRC is challenging the existing status quo and that Japan’s own naval modernization is intended to preserve the longstanding preponderance of the US-Japan alliance. What is certain is that China’s approach to maritime warfare has evolved, and the PRC has invested enormous resources into improving its capabilities in this domain.

The strategic concept driving China’s military modernization is “offshore defense.” Its goal is to project power farther from the Chinese mainland in order to deter hostile (notably American) interventions in regional conflicts in and around the South China Sea (SCS), Taiwan, or the East China Sea (ECS). This is to be achieved by applying two key principles. The first is “informatization,” indicating the implementation of new information technologies to improve command & control activities, communication, and targeting. The second is “non-contact warfare,” which means using long-range precision weapons to engage and neutralize enemy targets. Operationally, this resulted in the gradual development of an Anti-Access / Area Denial (A2/AD) strategy, a Western term indicating the ability to deter a foreign intervention or, if dissuasion fails, to delay and disrupt it.