China's Rising Sea Power: The PLA Navy's Submarine Challenge

This is a fascinating insight into China’s strategic abilities and ambitions, probing the real depths of its plans for the twenty-first century.

China's Rising Sea Power explores similarities between China’s strategic outlook today and that of earlier continental powers whose submarine fleets challenged dominant maritime powers for regional hegemony: Germany in two World Wars and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Using insights from classical naval strategic theory, Peter Howarth examines Beijing’s strategic logic in making tactical submarines the keystone of China’s naval force structure. He also investigates the influence of Soviet naval strategy and ancient Chinese military thought on the PLA Navy’s strategic culture, contending that China’s increasingly capable submarine fleet could play a key role in Beijing’s use of force to resolve the Taiwan issue.

This book will be of great interest to all students and scholars of security and strategic studies, Asian politics, geopolitics and military (naval) strategy.

Introduction 1. China’s Tactical Submarine Fleet 2. The Geopolitical Context 3. China’s New Maritime Strategy 4. Sea Control in the Western Pacific 5. Maritime Strategic Theory and the Logic of China’s Submarine Fleet 6. Geography, Narrow Seas and Submarine Terrain 7. Disputing U.S. Command of the China Seas 8. The Universal and the Particular in Strategic Logic 9. Influence of the Soviet Experience on the PRC’s Maritime Strategy 10. Chinese Strategic Culture – Indigenous Elements 11. Chinese Strategic Culture, Submarines and Prospects for War in the Taiwan Strait 12. Conclusion