China’s Mahan: The Man Who Created China’s Modern Navy
Insights from Xiaobing Li.
The Diplomat
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The Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Dr. Xiaobing Li – professor of history and the Don Betz Endowed Chair of International Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma and author of “China’s Mahan: Admiral Liu Huaqing and the Rise of the Modern Chinese Navy” (Naval Institute Press 2026) –is the 508th in“The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.”
Describe the influence of the 19th century U.S. Navy strategist Alfred Mahan on Admiral Liu Huaqing, the commander of China’s navy from 1982-1988 and a vice chair of the Central Military Commission from 1990-1998.
Mahan influenced Liu Huaqing with new strategic ideas and conceptions of maritime sovereignty and sea power. Mahan’s sea-power theory showed Liu what China needed to be a great power again. Liu realized that China had traditionally been a land power despite its long coastline. He agreed with Mahan on “rich country and a strong navy.” Liu also understood that China lost its power position in East Asia due to its naval defeat to Japan. China needed a strong naval force if it wanted a national rejuvenation.
Although Liu Huaqing’s theory and practice sometimes resembled or overlapped with parts of Mahanian theory, the findings in the work did not provide enough evidence to show Mahan’s direct influence on the Chinese admiral. One of the reasons is that Mahanian theory may include universal truths about the nature of maritime strategy. These truths are accessible to theorists and practitioners regardless of whether they have read Mahan or not.
How did Russian Admiral Sergey Gorshkov’s influence on Liu Huaqing differ from Mahan’s influence?
Meanwhile, Liu Huaqing’s fundamental understanding of maritime theory and naval force-building was derived from intellectual roots such as Gorshkov’s maritime theory and naval-building. The Chinese admiral shared the similar institutional framework and organizational system with the Soviet naval commander. Therefore, Liu Huaqing was more like China’s Gorshkov than “Red Mahan.”
Gorshkov influenced Liu on how to build a strong Chinese navy with institutional reform, technological improvement, and centralized party-naval control. Gorshkov’s theory and methodology showed Liu step by step to transform the PLA Navy (PLAN) from weak to strong, from a near shore fleet to a far-sea modern navy. Liu learned Gorshkov’s experience and lessons during his four-year study in the Soviet Union.
Liu Huaqing in 1955.
Analyze how PLAN operational doctrine and strategic thinking has been transformed under Liu Huaqing’s maritime security doctrine.
Liu Huaqing reconceptualized China’s sea power and shifted naval strategy from near shore defense to near sea defense and far-sea protection. He told the chiefs that China’s next war would be a naval conflict in near sea locations like the Taiwan Strait or South China Sea. Thereafter, the PLA moved away from traditional ground war preparation and instead focused on new naval warfare. Liu’s plan prioritized the PLA Navy’s modernization under the third-generation command and new efforts in reorganization, institutional reform, and improving sustainability systems.
His strategic thinking broadened the country’s maritime interests, redirected China’s ocean-going development, and built a blue-water navy capable of far-sea operations. He transformed the PLAN from a defensive force to an offensive navy, and his new strategy led the PLAN’s development of aircraft carrier battle groups, key combat warships, and high-tech weapon systems. As a result, China’s shipbuilding industry, aviation technology research and imports, reconstruction, qualitative improvement, and naval training and education systems backed its impressive naval development throughout the entire 1990s and continued into the 2010s. Liu shifted the PLAN from brown-water operations to blue-water development.
Liu Huaqing officially retired in 1998 and passed away in 2011, before Xi came to power. How Liu’s adaption of PLAN strategy set the stage for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s strategic priorities?
With geostrategic ambitions and political confidence, Xi Jinping launched his global plan, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), in 2013. His intention was to create the new maritime silk road via trading sea routes from the Pacific to Indian Oceans through Southeast Asia to South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, representing the maritime dimension of China’s global geostrategic ambitions. The BRI brought massive trade, finance, transportation, communication, infrastructure, and energy programs, by both sea and land routes, from Chinese coasts to other continents. It was designed to establish a China-centric global system excluding America.
Liu’s new naval strategy effectively prepared China for Xi’s BRI during the 2010s-2020s. Since Xi Jinping became China’s commander-in-chief in 2012, he emphasized Liu Huaqing’s sea power doctrine and expanded China’s maritime policy beyond that of either Jiang Zemin or Hu Jintao. Liu’s strong naval strategy became part of Xi’s grand strategy. Xi believed the current Asian-Pacific trade system under the U.S. leadership limited China’s maritime interests. He focused on naval development and required the PLAN to build a combat fleet capable of winning naval battles in the near and far seas.
In 2020, the global shipbuilding industry estimated that China’s shipbuilding capacity is the largest, making up around 45 percent, of global capacity. By 2020, the PLAN had 240,000 naval officers and sailors with an overall battle force of 350 surface ships and submarines – the U.S. Navy had 293 warships at that time. Among its most publicized development is a growing Chinese aircraft carrier fleet. Under the command of Xi Jinping, Liu Huaqing’s dreams of Chinese aircraft carriers and a blue-water navy became realities.
Assess how China’s blue water navy and new PLAN strategy might perform in Taiwan Strait or South China Sea maritime conflict despite the PLAN’s lack of contemporary warfighting experience.
Since he believed that the U.S. is in decline, Xi changed China’s strategic role from supporting the U.S. in the Asia-Pacific to challenging the U.S. in the region. He repositioned China as the Asia-Pacific regional epicenter, despite experiencing unprecedented demands and facing new challenges.
Taiwan has emerged as the most dangerous flashpoint in the growing U.S.-China rivalry. Chinese attacks on Taiwan, to protect Beijing’s so called “core interests,” are in China’s strategy. Beijing considers an attack on Taiwan as a near sea operation. The PLAN’s new strategy dismisses the timing issue and justifies the war efforts as defensive in nature, even though Chinese warships may have to open fire first. The new strategy and transformations require the PLAN to build a combat fleet capable of winning naval battles in an offensive, amphibious landing campaign again Taiwan. During the 2020s, Beijing strengthened multi-agent naval services, including the China Coast Guard (CCG) and Chinese maritime militia. The PLAN closely coordinated with its sister services for similar strategic goals.
Xi Jinping shifted China’s strategic position in the South China Sea and Pacific with an emphasis on far sea operations. For protection and attacks in far seas, the PLAN could use anti-aircraft carrier weapons, ship-based A2/AD systems, anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBM), and nuclear submarines.
In line with the strategic requirements of mobile operations and multi-dimensional offense and defense, the PLAN has reoriented to trans-oceanic mobility. In the 2020s, China operates 90 maritime installations, 13 of which are owned by these Chinese state. Ten of them are suitable for a naval base, after the PLA established its first naval facility in Djibouti in 2017.
2025-2049 is the most important time-period for China’s rejuvenation, as well as when the PLAN will reach the milestone of being a world-class navy.
