Great dive forward-China's naval ambitions and their implications for the region

Abstract

After centuries of sea-blindness, a continental China is on its way to become a major regional maritime power. As this paper tries to show, several factors, including the obsessive desire to get back to its great power status, can explain China's naval ambitions. Chinese leadership's commitment to build-up a modern navy has translated into a "great dive forward" for the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), i.e., an ambitious modernization programme which is aimed at giving China the capacity of power projection by the year 2050. The combination of such enhanced military capabilities with a deliberate Chinese ambiguity about what it intends to do with its naval power, has led to growing concerns among its neighbours. A look at what is currently going on in the East China Sea between China and Japan may serve as an example of future scenarios in the region.