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2 results

  • 4 - Termination of the Mainland-Based Forward Strategy

  • Kuan-Jen Chen, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
  • Book:
    Charting America's Cold War Waters in East Asia
    Published online:
    23 May 2024
    Print publication:
    30 May 2024, pp 102-127

  • Summary

    The interservice competition for leadership in the Pacific made it impossible for Washington to reach a consensus on strategic deployment in maritime East Asia. What really brought about the US Navy’s renouncement of its mainland-based strategy and its subsequent adoption of an offshore defensive perimeter was not the achievement of a consensus with the other services but the Chinese Communist Party’s occupation of the whole of mainland China in 1949. At this point, the United States had no choice but to withdraw all its naval forces from Qingdao, which had been the emblem of the Navy’s forward-deployed, offensive, and mainland-based strategic thinking in East Asia. China’s split across the Taiwan Strait left the structure of international politics in maritime East Asia indeterminate.

  • Barriers, Springboards and Benchmarks: China Conceptualizes the Pacific “Island Chains”*

  • Andrew S. Erickson, Joel Wuthnow
  • Journal:
    The China Quarterly / Volume 225 / March 2016
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 January 2016, pp. 1-22
    Print publication:
    March 2016

  • US government reports describe Chinese-conceived “island chains” in the Western Pacific as narrow demarcations for Chinese “counter-intervention” operations to defeat US and allied forces in altercations over contested territorial claims. The sparse scholarship available does little to contest this excessively myopic assertion. Yet, further examination reveals meaningful differences that can greatly enhance an understanding of Chinese views of the “island chains” concept, and with it important aspects of China's efforts to develop as a maritime power. Long before China had a navy or naval strategists worthy of the name, the concept had originated and been developed for decades by previous great powers vying for Asia-Pacific influence. Today, China's own authoritative interpretations are flexible, nuanced and multifaceted – befitting the multiple and sometimes contradictory factors with which Beijing must contend in managing its meteoric maritime rise. These include the growing importance of sea lane security at increasing distances and levels of operational intensity.