S1E5: Admiral Liu Huaqing and China's Island Chain Strategy

For 3000 years, China’s overall strategy was to defend against invaders from the West and the North, but to turn its back on the Pacific. In the early 1990s, Admiral Liu Huaqing changed this almost overnight. In this episode of Talking Strategy, Professor Christopher Yung will tell us how this has revolutionized China’s grand strategy, and what this new naval orientation means for the rest of the world.

America’s performance in the Iraq War of 1991, unchecked by the imploding Soviet Union, led to a profound reassessment in Beijing of China’s strategic interests and position in the world. The Chief of China’s Naval Staff, Admiral Liu Huaqing, advocated a complete turnaround in China’s military posture to take on the world’s only superpower, with a long-term naval armament programme. The progressive realization of a new grand strategy is planned in three steps, involving the assertion of China’s predominance over the three island chains in the Pacific, progressively rolling back the position the US has established here since the mid-19th century.

Paul O’Neill and Beatrice Heuser are joined in this episode of Talking Strategy by Christopher Yung who holds the Donald Bren Chair of Non-Western Strategic Thought and is the Director of East Asian Studies at Marine Corps University and author of several books and articles on the expansion of China’s navy and its expansionist naval strategy.