China, the Maritime (Economic) Power

China has a long and storied history as a continental power. Historically, its conquests and trading networks alike centered on land; the glory days of Chinese naval power – the voyages of Admiral Zheng He in the 15th century – were the exception rather than the rule.

So when the call for Beijing to become a “maritime power” began sounding in China’s top political meetings, analysts immediately took notice. The goal of making the country into a “maritime power” was introduced at China’s premier political meeting – the Communist Party’s National Congress, held only once every five years. The phrase received even more official imprimatur with its inclusion in the 13th Five Year Plan, the official document that will guide Beijing’s policy making from 2016 to 2020.

Foreign analysts love to write about the security implications of this transformation – the rapid growth (both qualitative and quantitative) of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), its ever-expanding operations overseas, and the implications for China’s maritime disputes with Japan (in the East China Sea) and Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei (in the South China Sea). Yet this focus misses out on what China arguably considers the more important piece of being a “maritime power”: the economic dimension. Not only does China have economic goals for its maritime expansion that are quite distinct from the security dimension – including, for example, developing capabilities for deep-sea scientific research and resource extraction – but even China’s security goals are largely aimed at defending Beijing’s economic interests in the maritime domain.

In then-President Hu Jintao’s initial call for China to become a maritime power, the focus was decidedly economic. In his swan song – his final work report before the Communist Party of China National Congress in 2012 – Hu called for the government to “enhance our capacity for exploiting marine resources, develop the marine economy, protect the marine ecological environment, resolutely safeguard China's maritime rights and interests, and build China into a maritime power.”

This same formula, in mostly the same order (“develop the marine economy” is bumped to first on the list), received the highest seal of official approval by being included in China’s latest Five Year Plan, which was approved by the National People’s Congress in March 2016. In fact, the entire section dealing with China’s maritime ambitions is titled, “Expanding Space for the Blue [ie, Maritime] Economy.”

Hu’s successor, Xi Jinping, embraced the same policy outline. In July 2013, when Xi offered his own take on China’s quest to become a “maritime power” at a Politburo Central Committee meeting, he too highlighted the economic implications. “In the 21st century, oceans and seas have an increasingly important role to play in a country's economic development and opening up to the outside world,” Xinhua paraphrased Xi as saying. China’s top leader also endorsed efforts to “cultivate the marine economy into a new growth point of the country.”

A separate Xinhua commentary published the next day argued that China’s “move to develop its maritime power means developing the marine economy, promoting innovation in marine technologies, protecting the marine environment, enhancing capacities to exploit marine resources, and safeguarding maritime rights and interests.” Only the final point directly connects to security concerns.

This is not to say that China’s maritime dream doesn’t have security underpinnings. Beijing remains openly concerned about maritime encirclement, being trapped within the first or second “island chains” by the United States, Japan, and other like-minded partners. China’s quest to develop a world-class blue water navy, with the capability to operate around the world, is the clearest indication of the security component of China’s maritime build-up.

Yet even these naval ambitions have an economic foundation. China wants a strong navy, in large part, to secure its commercial interests overseas and defend the vital maritime shipping routes that provide most of its oil and allow its export-dependent economy to keep humming along. China overtook the United States as the world’s largest trading nation in 2013, according to Chinese statistics, when its imports and exports accounted for a combined $4.16 trillion. Thanks to an economic slowdown and plummeting commodity prices, total trade was down to $3.73 trillion in 2015, neck-and-neck with the United States at $3.74 trillion. But the flip-flopping of which held the “world’s largest” title shouldn’t obscure the fact that China’s global trade has skyrocketed – and yet its ability to secure trade routes has lagged far behind that of the United States. That fact is not lost on Chinese leaders.

China’s 2015 military strategy white paper bluntly stated that “the security of overseas interests concerning energy and resources, strategic sea lines of communication (SLOCs), as well as institutions, personnel, and assets abroad, has become an imminent issue.” The white paper’s call for China to abandon “the traditional mentality that land outweighs sea” should be read in this context.

Protecting maritime trade routes is only one piece of the “blue economy” China envisions. The 13th Five Year Plan calls for China to develop its far seas fishing industry, speed up the development of the maritime service industry, and develop marine science and technology – with particular emphasis on high-tech “breakthroughs” in deep sea, “green,” and security technology. In this regard, the section on China’s “maritime economy” reflects deep-seated concerns echoed throughout the Five Year Plan: food and water security (thus an emphasis on expanding China’s fishing industry and desalination projects), environmental protection, moving China up the value chain through innovation in key industries, and bolstering the country’s service industry to replace a dependence on manufacturing. 

These goals may be economic in nature, but they will have security implications. Just as China’s maritime trade is partially driving the PLAN’s rapid modernization, China’s assertiveness in staking its claims in the South China Sea is motivated in part by a need to access resources – not only the oil and gas believed to lie underneath the seabed, but the fish and other marine resources within the waters themselves. Think back to some of the more controversial Chinese actions in the South China Sea in recent years: positioning a deep-sea oil rig in waters Vietnam considers its exclusive economic zone; run-ins between Chinese fishermen and the Indonesian coast guard near the Natuna Islands (and, earlier, with the Philippine Navy near Scarborough Shoal); the construction of artificial islands which Beijing claims will provide necessary services for civilians of all countries. Each corresponds neatly to a bullet point in the “expand the maritime economy” subsection of China’s 13th Five Year Plan.

Notably, the Five Year Plan also calls for encouraging Hainan (the Chinese province responsible for administering China’s South China Sea claims) to “make use of the advantage of natural resources in the South China Sea to develop a characteristic maritime economy.” If that’s any indication, we can expect history to repeat itself over the next five years.

While this paints an ominous picture of future South China Sea tensions, it could also provide an off-ramp. If China’s motivations are primarily economic – albeit with a healthy dose of national pride thrown in – it opens the door for a negotiated settlement. Dating back to the Deng Xiaoping era, China has avowed that it is willing to shelve disputes in return for joint exploitation of natural resources. That seems like a dim hope today, among creeping militarization and strident rhetoric, but it’s a possibility worth exploring.