Is China Repeating Germany's World War I Mistakes?

John Maurer

Security, Asia

Channeling his inner Kaiser Wilhelm, Xi calls on China’s navy to “aim for the top ranks in the world. . . . Building a strong and modern navy is an important mark of a top ranking global military.”

At a recent show of Chinese naval might in the South China Sea, President Xi Jinping called for China to acquire a world-class navy, declaring to the assembled officers and crews that there has never been a more urgent need for the country to possess a powerful fleet. This demonstration of naval power was the largest ever put on display by the People’s Republic of China: forty-eight surface warships and submarines, including the aircraft carrier Liaoning, along with seventy-six aircraft, all paraded on review before the Chinese leader.

What better way than this rousing display of naval might to boost the dream of a resurgent China, determined to play the role of a rising great power on the world stage, as well as rally popular nationalist support for the regime? A line of powerful warships steaming confidently ahead in formation and fast planes streaking overhead certainly makes for great theater. Standing tall at center stage of this spectacle, Xi took the fleet’s salute. He delivered his lines, posing as the heroic warrior dressed in military uniform—the lead actor to be reckoned with in an unfolding grand historical drama involving the fate of nations.

There were echoes in his speech of a similar call to national greatness by the leader of an earlier aspiring world power. At the turn of the twentieth century, Kaiser Wilhelm II proclaimed that his country had an urgent need for a naval buildup to counter the British Royal Navy in its drive to find a “place in the sun.” Along with Admiral von Tirpitz, the Kaiser championed the Reich’s effort to become a great sea power, taking the lead in calling upon the German people to build a mighty navy.