Reprints in Portuguese (complementing the 2009 Spanish version) essays written by representatives of Western Hemisphere navies during the preparation of the U.S. 2007 maritime strategy (published in English as Naval War College Newport Paper 31) and commentaries written after its appearance and published in the Naval War College Review.

Reprints in Spanish essays written by representatives of Western Hemisphere navies during the preparation of the U.S. 2007 maritime strategy (published in English as Naval War College Newport Paper 31) and commentaries written after its appearance and published in the Naval War College Review.

The new U.S. maritime strategy embodies a historic reassessment of the international system and how the nation can best pursue its interests in harmony with those of other states. In light of the strategy’s focus on building partnerships to better safeguard the global maritime commons, it is vital that American leaders clearly understand the frank and unvarnished views of allies, friends, and potential partners.

Chinese responses warrant especially close consideration. China is a key global stakeholder with which the United States shares many common maritime interests. Beijing has not made any official public statements on the maritime strategy thus far. Yet Chinese opinions on this matter are clearly important, even if they suggest that in some areas the two nations must “agree to disagree.” Chinese reactions to the maritime strategy provide a window into a larger strategic dynamic–not just in East Asia, where China is already developing as a great power, but globally, where it has the potential to play a major role as well. How the United States can maintain its existing status and role while China continues to rise–as the world’s greatest developed and developing powers attempt to reach an understanding that might be termed “competitive coexistence”–will be perhaps the critical question in international relations for the twenty-first century.

To that end, this study analyzes three of the most significant unofficial Chinese assessments of the maritime strategy publicly available to date and offers annotated full-length translations (which follow, in the form of essays) so that a foreign audience can survey the documents themselves.

Required reading for the Naval War College Strategy and Policy Department’s Senior and Intermediate Leadership Courses.

In order to cope with threats and safeguard U.S. interests, the new U.S. maritime strategy puts forward six major missions for sea power: deploy decisive sea power in a forward position in limited conflicts of regional scale; deter war between major powers; win wars for the nation; safeguard homeland security from long-distance; promote and maintain cooperative relationships with more international partners; and prevent or eliminate regional destruction before it affects the international system. To accomplish these six missions, U.S. sea power must possess the corresponding six core capabilities, including the capability to be in a forward position (present global deployment), deterrence capability, sea control capability, force projection capability, the capability to safeguard public order at sea, and humanitarian assistance and disaster response capability.

In October 2007, the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard jointly released the “Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower,” which aroused widespread attention in international military circles. The new U.S. “maritime strategy” focuses on future security threats. It not only puts forward some new concepts, but also demonstrates many aspects of future military strategic adjustment and the development trends of military transformation. As a bellwether of world military transformation, U.S. maritime strategic transformation merits close scrutiny.

On 17 October 2007, the new maritime strategy, jointly drafted by the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, was formally introduced at the United States Naval War College in Rhode Island. The U.S. Department of Defense website published the full text simultaneously. This important strategic report is titled “21st Century Sea Power Cooperation Strategy” [A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower]. This is the first time in history that the three joint forces have formulated a unified maritime strategy. This strategy report represents the first major revision of U.S. maritime strategy in over twenty years.

This article, published in 2004 in China’s most prestigious military journal, China Military Science, merits special attention as a cogent explanation for the recent acceleration in China’s naval development that has been manifested by the wide array of sophisticated warships that have emerged from Chinese shipyards since 2000. Xu asserts that contemporary Chinese maritime geostrategy is powerfully informed by a tragic history in which “China’s rulers shut the door to the outside world [and] the sea . . . was neglected. . . . [Thus,] the sea became a springboard for invaders.” But the geostrategic environment for China’s maritime expansion is now favorable, because of a confluence of global trends, including the collapse of the USSR, the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the emergence of a “large Chinese economic bloc” as a global force, and Beijing’s newly agile diplomacy. The author reviews a number of aspects of China’s maritime development, ranging from expanding commerce to new construction projects in the Indian Ocean. Senior Captain Xu’s rationale for an expanded PLA Navy rests on his contention that China’s “long period of prosperity [as well as] the Chinese nation’s existence, development, and great resurgence [all] increasingly rely on the sea.” He also is frank in his concern about “a concentration of strategic power in the Asia-Pacific region on [China’s] maritime flank.”