China meets the Sea: Perceptions and Strategies
Paulo Duarte
This article examines Chinese maritime strategy, emphasizing its current developments in comparisson with the past. It highlights the strategic importance to Beijing of the control/access to a set of islands, archipelagos and sea passages in the Indian and Pacific oceans and explains how the assumptions of Alfred Mahan are reflected in China's view of the sea. Beijing seems to be aware that a power that does not understand the importance of the oceans is a power without a future.
