CHINESE MARITIME TRANSFORMATION AND SEA POWER: A NET ASSESSMENT by Howard Wang 王昊 A thesis submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of International Affairs Baltimore, Maryland April 2021 Abstract Chinese Communist Party (CCP) grand strategy is undergoing a sweeping reorientation toward maritime power. Its leaders have declared becoming a “maritime great power” a vital objective. Its naval modernization has produced the largest navy in the world, and its investments in ostensibly civilian assets such as foreign ports and sensors able to track ship movements proliferate across the Indo-Pacific region. To what end? Prior efforts to explain the CCP’s bid for sea power and assess the threat it poses to the United States tend to extrapolate CCP intentions from observed capabilities. These explanations do not align with the CCP’s stated intentions and have not been predictive of its current fleets. This thesis uses a net assessment approach to align CCP capabilities with its intent over a span of decades to arrive at a different characterization of the threat CCP maritime transformation poses to U.S. interests. It finds that the CCP has been engaged in unannounced strategic competition with the United States since before the turn of the century, and its object in this competition is to displace U.S.- led security architecture in pursuit of national rejuvenation. The accumulation and exertion of sea power plays a critical role in strategies to meet this objective; as a result, the CCP has undertaken significant efforts to accumulate and exert sea power to great effect against the United States. Continentalist interests in the CCP bureaucracy have imposed necessary modifications to how the CCP’s sea power manifests, giving rise to potential vulnerabilities in how the CCP builds and uses sea power. Principal Advisor: Dr. Jason J. Fichtner Committee Member: Dr. Carla P. Freeman Committee Member: Dr. Thomas G. Mahnken ii Acknowledgments I am deeply grateful to my principal advisor, Professor Jason Fichtner, with whom I was lucky enough to study at the beginning and at the end of my graduate studies. He has been unfailingly supportive throughout my time in graduate school and invested significant effort challenging my arguments in this thesis. This thesis and my analysis at large are better for it. I was also fortunate to have met and learned from my committee members Professor Carla Freeman and Professor Tom Mahnken early in my time at Johns Hopkins SAIS. Both have been generous with their time and their wealth of expertise. Dr. Freeman’s engaging ideas and approach to her own research were formative for my understanding of Chinese policymaking dynamics. Dr. Mahnken’s conceptual clarity and analytical rigor inspired me to refine, and refine again, my arguments with the ambitions that they be useful as well as interesting. I am also grateful to other faculty. Josh White and Michael Chase were both generous with their advice as I was shaping my research plans, and both gave me many opportunities to pick their brains. Lonnie Henley’s incisive analysis and generously given support, continuing years after he first taught me how to research the PLA, serve as examples for my own work. In writing this thesis, I also enjoyed enriching conversations with dozens of researchers and analysts not named here. I am especially grateful to Caitlin McDermott, whose extraordinary patience and support were vital throughout this process. I started writing this thesis during a global pandemic, which posed challenges to and beyond my writing this thesis. Because of Caitlin, I did not face any of those challenges alone. iii Acronyms ADIZ air defense identification zone ASBM anti-ship ballistic missile ASCM anti-ship cruise missile ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations BRI Belt and Road Initiative CCG China Coast Guard CCP Chinese Communist Party CICA Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures CMC Central Military Commission DMO Distributed Maritime Operations DoD U.S. Department of Defense DRC State Council Development Research Center DSR Defense Strategy Review DWP defense white paper EEZ exclusive economic zone FON Freedom of Navigation FONOP freedom of navigation operation IOR Indian Ocean Region IPCSA International Port Community Systems Association ISR intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance LCS littoral combat ship LRASM long-range anti-ship missile MLRS multiple launch rocket system MSG military strategic guidance MSRI Maritime Silk Road Initiative NSC National Security Council ONA Office of Net Assessment PAFMM People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia PAP People’s Armed Police PLA People’s Liberation Army PLAAF People’s Liberation Army Air Force PLAGF People’s Liberation Army Ground Forces PLAN People’s Liberation Army Navy PLARF People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force PRC People’s Republic of China RMA revolution in military affairs SAM surface-to-air missile SLOC sea line of communication SOE state-owned enterprise SSF Strategic Support Force THAAD Terminal High Altitude Area Defense UNCLOS United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea USG United States government VLS vertical launch system iv Contents Abstract....................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................................... iii List of Tables ............................................................................................................................ vii List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... viii List of Maps ............................................................................................................................... ix I. Executive Summary .................................................................................................................1 II. Introduction .............................................................................................................................3 Research Question and Hypothesis ........................................................................................6 Previous Scholarship on Chinese Maritime Transformation .....................................................7 Naval Nationalism ................................................................................................................8 Shifting Geopolitical Threat ................................................................................................11 Survival ..............................................................................................................................14 Gaps in Explaining PRC Maritime Transformation .................................................................18 Nationalism and Border Threats? .......................................................................................20 Securing Maritime Trade? ..................................................................................................22 Survival? ............................................................................................................................24 Framing CCP Intent ...............................................................................................................26 Cheap Talk and Grand Strategy: Identifying Authoritative Sources ....................................27 Principal-Agent Problems in CCP Authority........................................................................31 Research Approach: Net Assessment ...................................................................................33 Organization of the Study ...................................................................................................36 III. Parameters: How to Think about the USG-CCP Maritime Balance .......................................37 Sea Power .............................................................................................................................39 Time Frame ...........................................................................................................................41 Theater ..................................................................................................................................42 IV. Objectives: The Maritime Turn in CCP Grand Strategy ........................................................43 CCP Grand Strategy: Resolving Contradictions Toward National Rejuvenation ....................44 Prelude: Toward Strategic Opportunity, 1993 to 1999 ........................................................49 Toward Striving for Achievement, 2000 to 2013 .................................................................55 Toward Naked Ambition, 2014 to Present ..........................................................................63 CCP Maritime Strategy: Becoming a Maritime Great Power ..................................................69 Jiang Zemin’s Maritime Terminology ..................................................................................70 Hu Jintao’s Great Power Ambitions and Maritime Transformation ......................................74 Hu Persists with Land-Sea Integration ...............................................................................79 Xi Jinping Continues PRC Maritime Transformation ...........................................................82