The 1988 Blues—Admirals, Activists, and the Development of the Chinese Maritime Identity

Naval War College Review Volume 74 Number 2 Spring 2021 Article 6 2021 The 1988 Blues—Admirals, Activists, and the Development of the Chinese Maritime Identity Andrew Rhodes China Maritime Studies Institute Follow this and additional works at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review Recommended Citation Rhodes, Andrew (2021) "The 1988 Blues—Admirals, Activists, and the Development of the Chinese Maritime Identity," Naval War College Review: Vol. 74 : No. 2 , Article 6. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol74/iss2/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Rhodes: The 1988 Blues—Admirals, Activists, and the Development of the Ch THE 1988 BLUES Admirals, Activists, and the Development of the Chinese Maritime Identity Andrew Rhodes he year 1988 marked a critical moment in China’s emergence as a maritime power. The seven months from February to August 1988 saw not only a major Tnaval campaign in the Spratly Islands but also the startling cultural phenomenon of 河殇 (Heshang, or River Elegy), a multiepisode television documentary that called on China to turn away from tradition to embrace a maritime identity.1 The prodemocracy creators of Heshang and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy (PLAN) leadership had little in common in terms of how they thought China should be governed, but there is a surprising overlap in the way the two groups were “selling the sea,” or seeking to forge a more maritime future for Chi- na.2 These two parallel stories highlight an important but overlooked historical moment in the evolution of China’s maritime identity and its commitment to maritime power. In China in 1988, several trends were building to a dramatic, and ultimately violent, crescendo, with major implications for Chinese society and China’s place in the world. A decade after the launch of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, the movement that sought democratic political reforms and a new Chinese culture was developing powerful momentum and ties to the outside world—only to Andrew Rhodes is a career civil servant. He earned meet tragic suppression a year later at Tiananmen an MA in international relations from the Johns Square. At the same time, the PLA, and the PLAN Hopkins University School of Advanced Internation- in particular, was in the midst of its own reform al Studies. In 2019, he graduated with highest dis- tinction from the College of Naval Warfare, U.S. Na- and new engagement on the global stage. Consid- val War College (NWC), and is an affiliated scholar eration of the intersection of the cultural and po- of NWC’s China Maritime Studies Institute. litical history of 1988 with the military and naval Naval War College Review, Spring 2021, Vol. 74, No. 2 history of 1988 has focused—understandably—on Published by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2021 1 62 NAVAL WARNaval COLLEGE War REVIEW College Review, Vol. 74 [2021], No. 2, Art. 6 the path to June 1989. But there are intriguing parallels, beyond mere coinci- dence, in the cultural and naval events of the spring and summer of 1988 that provide a new lens for viewing the relationship between Chinese culture and Chinese sea power. Thirty-two years is not long in the grand sweep of naval history or Chinese history, but the rapid pace of PLAN development in the twenty-first century makes 1988 seem rather like the ancient past. The late 1980s are within the liv- ing memory of many scholars and strategists, but too few remember the events of 1988 and the global, regional, and national context in which they took place. For most Americans, the China of 1988 hides behind two veils—the Tiananmen Square massacre and the end of the Cold War—that obscure our view of important historical trends. Many of the key trends the world confronts today grew from seeds that already were germinating, in very recognizable ways, in 1988. A closer examination of 1988 suggests, for example, that the campaign begun in 2014 to build artificial islands in the Spratly Islands had unprecedented scope but emerged from actions driven by the “maritime mentality” and specific naval actions of 1988.3 Revisiting Heshang reveals how PLA leaders in the Xi Jinping era have echoed the language of 1988’s prodemocracy activists. The PLAN com- mander in 2014 wrote that China had suffered in the past because it “clung to the traditional thinking of valuing the land and neglecting the sea,” while the 2015 defense white paper called for China to abandon the “traditional mentality that land outweighs sea.”4 The next section of this article briefly will review key concepts in the literature on maritime identity and sea power, and will suggest taking a nuanced view of China’s evolution from a continental power to a more maritime power. Following this theory section, the two subsequent sections will explore the cultural dimen- sions and historical context in which Heshang emerged and the strategic context of the 1988 naval campaign. The final portions of the article will examine the interaction of these cultural and naval events, and how such a consideration en- riches our understanding of China’s maritime identity. The article will conclude by arguing that the events of 1988 offer clear evidence that China’s commitment to sea power has been well under way for more than three decades, and has built on a surprisingly diverse basis of support over that period. CONCEPTS OF MARITIME IDENTITY AND THE PURSUIT OF SEA POWER The approach of examining 1988 through both cultural and strategic lenses rests on a strong foundation in the literature on the nature of sea power. Theorists of sea power broadly agree that a nation’s geographic, political, economic, and cultural contexts shape its relationship with the sea and sea power. As Geoffrey Till https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol74/iss2/6 2 Rhodes: The 1988 Blues—Admirals, Activists, and the Development of the Ch RHODES 63 writes, “seapower is the product of an amalgam of interconnected constituents that are difficult to tease apart.”5 However, some theorists have emphasized the nation’s innate characteristics and values that lead to its acquisition and mainte- nance of sea power, while others have put more weight on the conscious policy decisions of governments to promote and develop sea power. The argument that sea power emerges directly from national character has been compelling to writers from Thucydides to Mahan and has been well argued more recently by Peter Padfield and Andrew Lambert. In a series of books, Pad- field contends that there is a close link between the ability of peoples “ascendant at sea” to prevail over those “with a territorial power base,” on the one hand, and the “system of beliefs and of government associated with supreme maritime power,” on the other. In such a system, merchant wealth leads to “merchant values” and political structures with “dispersed power and open, consultative rule.” In this sense, the impressive voyages of Ming China in the fifteenth century did not represent true maritime power, because they were not profit-driven enter- prises but instead merely prestige projects “financed by the imperial treasury.” Padfield also underscores the links between the progressive or disruptive culture of new media and maritime power.6 Padfield focuses on the innovative media of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (the novel and the daily newspaper) that promoted the values of the merchant class, producing contrasting bases for maritime power in France, England, and the Netherlands.7 In 1980s China, television was a similarly new medium that was adapted readily for disruptive cultural arguments. More recently, Lambert’s 2018 book argues that there are no pure “seapowers” in the world today, and history has seen only a small number of true sea powers. Lambert’s study of how a nation creates a “seapower identity” makes plain that sea power is a function of cultural factors far more than political, economic, or military ones. In this very broad cultural argument, Lambert states emphatically that the real “soul of seapower” must be sought in the culture of a state, and he chooses to invoke art historians and critics, such as Jacob Burckhardt and John Ruskin, as being more relevant to the matter than Mahan’s elements of sea power, which, Lambert argues, address “only the strategic surface.”8 Jakub Grygiel also considers many centuries of the history of sea power, but in studying ancient China he finds conclusions different from those of Lambert and Padfield. Grygiel’s analysis of the Ming dynasty leads him to argue that the Ming retreat from the sea after the voyages of Zheng He “was not a product of deeply embedded cultural values peculiar and eternal to China. Rather it was a histori- cally specific policy that proved to be a costly mistake.”9 In considering modern Chinese grand strategy and the country’s ambitions as a rising power, Chinese and foreign scholars have investigated the influence of Mahanian maritime Published by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2021 3 64 NAVAL WARNaval COLLEGE War REVIEW College Review, Vol. 74 [2021], No. 2, Art. 6 thinking in China and debated whether a continental orientation—sometimes associated with the geopolitical theory of Halford Mackinder—holds more explanatory power.10 James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara find clear evidence of Mahanian tendencies in Chinese leaders since Deng and even some appreciation for naval power in Mao Zedong.

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