China And Admiralty

This book selects leading, innovative and influential Chinese maritime judgments and presents full translation of them, with brief summary, to the readers so that they can have insights of how the Chinese maritime judges interpret, apply and develop Chinese maritime law in practice. China trades with other states in trillions of USD every year, and about 95% of the cargoes are carried by ocean-going ships calling at hundreds of Chinese ports each single day. Due to the enormous and steadily growing trade volume and shipping activities, foreign ships, companies and persons are often caught by the Chinese maritime law and court. The parties involved and their lawyers are more than ever enthusiastic to study Chinese maritime cases in order to deal with their own cases properly or, if possible, predict the potential problems and avoid the disputes outright. The book is appealing to and benefits worldwide law students, academics, practitioners and industrial people in the shipping, trade, insurance and financial fields. The book remedies to certain extent the situation that there is lack of authoritative sources available to foreign personnel to look into how Chinese justice system functions.

In modern history, China has been primarily a land power, dominating smaller states along its massive continental flanks. But China’s turn toward the sea is now very much a reality, as evident in its stunning rise in global shipbuilding markets, its vast and expanding merchant marine, the wide offshore reach of its energy and minerals exploration companies, its growing fishing fleet, and indeed its increasingly modern navy. Yet, for all these achievements, there is still profound skepticism regarding China’s potential as a genuine maritime power. Beijing must still import the most vital subcomponents for its shipyards, maritime governance remains severely bureaucratically challenged, and the navy evinces, at least as of yet, little enthusiasm for significant blue water power projection capabilities. This volume provides a truly comprehensive assessment of prospects for China’s maritime development by situating these important geostrategic phenomena within a larger world historical context. China is hardly the only land power in history to attempt transformation by fostering sea power. Many continental powers have elected or been impelled to transform themselves into significant maritime powers in order to safeguard their strategic position or advance their interests. We examine cases of attempted transformation from the Persian Empire to the Soviet Union, and determine the reasons for their success or failure. Too many works on China view the nation in isolation. Of course, China’s history and culture are to some extent exceptional, but building intellectual fences actually hinders the effort to understand China’s current development trajectory. Without underestimating the enduring pull of China’s past as it relates to threats to the country’s internal stability and its landward borders, this comparative study provides reason to believe that China has turned the corner on a genuine maritime transformation. If that proves indeed to be the case, it would be a remarkable if not singular event in the history of the last two millennia.

China’s Maritime Power dates back thousands of years. China has one of the oldest naval traditions in the world, dating from at least the end of the Warring States period in 221 BC. Nonetheless, China has historically been a continental state with a large ground force and only a coastal navy with limited blue water capability. The rise of modern day China raises considerable regional and security concerns, besides economic and political competition towards finding a rightful place in power politics of the South Asian Region and hence needs a critical analysis. There is a need to focus future strategies to deal with such challenges, both in the medium and long term. An effort to achieve the same has been undertaken in this book. The book is sure to stimulate further discussions on China’s navy and its ambitions.

This challenging new book argues that the People's Republic of China is pursuing a long-term strategy to extend its national power by sea.

Lo Jung-pang argues that during each of the three periods when imperial China embarked on maritime enterprises (the Qin and Han dynasties, the Sui and early Tang dynasties, and Song, Yuan, and early Ming dynasties), coastal states took the initiative at a time when China was divided, maritime trade and exploration subsequently peaked when China was strong and unified, and declined as Chinese power weakened. At such times, China's people became absorbed by internal affairs, and state policy focused on threats from the north and the west. These cycles of maritime activity, each lasting roughly five hundred years, corresponded with cycles of cohesion and division, strength and weakness, prosperity and impoverishment, expansion and contraction. In the early 21st century, a strong and outward looking China is again building up its navy and seeking maritime dominance, with important implications for trade, diplomacy and naval affairs. Events will not necessarily follow the same course as in the past, but Lo Jung-pang's analysis suggests useful questions for the study of events as they unfold and decades to come.

This book conducts a comprehensive study on China's maritime strategy. It discusses the lessons of maritime power history that must be learnt by Chinese today, the relations between China's maritime strategy and domestic developing problems of China, the status and influence of maritime strategy from China's overall development strategy perspective, and the geopolitical targets of Chinese navy in 2050.China's maritime strategy is one of the most important academic and realistic subjects in the present and future. This book is the first book to discuss China's maritime strategy comprehensively in and outside China. It will give readers a better sense of why China has to develop its sea power, why it lays so much emphasis on Taiwan and the South China sea, why the country can make friends with India but not Japan, and why China's maritime strategy will never challenge America but has to face the pressure from America's maritime hegemony, and so on.

China’s reaction to the United States’ new maritime strategy will significantly impact its success, according to three Naval War College professors. Based on the premise that preventing wars is as important as winning wars, this new U.S. strategy, they explain, embodies a historic reassessment of the international system and how the United States can best pursue its interests in cooperation with other nations. The authors contend that despite recent turbulence in U.S.-China military relations, substantial shared interests could enable extensive U.S.-China maritime security cooperation, as they attempt to reach an understanding of “competitive coexistence.” But for professionals to structure cooperation, they warn, Washington and Beijing must create sufficient political and institutional space.

Xi Jinping has made his ambitions for the People's Liberation Army (PLA) perfectly clear, there is no mystery what he wants, first, that China should become a "great maritime power" and secondly, that the PLA "become a world-class armed force by 2050." He wants this latter objective to be largely completed by 2035. China as a Twenty-First-Century Naval Power focuses on China's navy and how it is being transformed to satisfy the "world class" goal. Beginning with an exploration of why China is seeking to become such a major maritime power, author Michael McDevitt first explores the strategic rationale behind Xi's two objectives. China's reliance on foreign trade and overseas interests such as China's Belt and Road strategy. In turn this has created concerns within the senior levels of China's military about the vulnerability of its overseas interests and maritime life-lines. is a major theme. McDevitt dubs this China's "sea lane anxiety" and traces how this has required the PLA Navy to evolve from a "near seas"-focused navy to one that has global reach; a "blue water navy." He details how quickly this transformation has taken place, thanks to a patient step-by-step approach and abundant funding. The more than 10 years of anti-piracy patrols in the far reaches of the Indian Ocean has acted as a learning curve accelerator to "blue water" status. McDevitt then explores the PLA Navy's role in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. He provides a detailed assessment of what the PLAN will be expected to do if Beijing chooses to attack Taiwan potentially triggering combat with America's "first responders" in East Asia, especially the U.S. Seventh Fleet and U.S. Fifth Air Force. He conducts a close exploration of how the PLA Navy fits into China's campaign plan aimed at keeping reinforcing U.S. forces at arm's length (what the Pentagon calls anti-access and area denial [A2/AD]) if war has broken out over Taiwan, or because of attacks on U.S. allies and friends that live in the shadow of China. McDevitt does not know how Xi defines "world class" but the evidence from the past 15 years of building a blue water force has already made the PLA Navy the second largest globally capable navy in the world. This book concludes with a forecast of what Xi's vision of a "world-class navy" might look like in the next fifteen years when the 2035 deadline is reached.