By Frédéric Grare and Manisha Reuter
Throughout the last century, China was primarily a land-based power. But in its 2015 white paper on military strategy, Beijing explicitly set out its goal of becoming “a maritime power” before beginning to modernise and expand the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).
The expansion of the PLAN from a coastguard into a so-called blue-water navy, which is capable of operating globally and across the deep waters of open oceans, laid the foundation... Читать дальше...