Chinese geopolitics predictably pays close attention to the tension between sea powers and land powers. Wenmu notes how, in the Indian Ocean, the British Empire enjoyed more naval power compared to the Americans "because it occupied the homonymous continent. And because it dominated the seas, the United Kingdom also threatened the Russian Empire, which was a land power."
Wenmu quotes from Alfred Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power Upon History on the reciprocal influence between control of the seas and control of the land. But, he adds: "Mahan did not analyze this relation on a global level ... Based on the priorities of the United States, he concentrated most of all on distant seas."
Wenmu crucially stresses how the Pacific Ocean is the "obligatory passage of the Maritime Silk Road." Even though China "developed its naval capacity much later, it enjoys [a] geographical advantage in relation to the UK and the US." And with that, he brings us to the essential Tibet question.
One of Wenmu's key points is how "the Tibetan plateau allows the People's Republic to access the resources respectively of the Pacific Ocean to the east and those of the Indian Ocean in the west. If from the plateau we look at the American base in Diego Garcia [in the center of the Indian Ocean] we can't have any doubts about the natural advantage of Chinese geopolitics." The implication is that the UK and US must "consume a great deal of resources to cross the oceans and develop a chain of islands."
Wenmu shows how the geography of the Tibetan plateau "links in a natural way the Tibetan region to the dominant power in the Chinese central plains" while it does "not link it to the countries in the South Asia subcontinent." Thus Tibet should be considered as a "natural part of China."
China is supported by the continental plaque, "which it controls along its coast," and "possesses technology of medium and long-range missile attack," guaranteeing it virtually a "great capacity of reaction in both oceans" with a "relatively powerful naval force." And that's how China, as Wenmu maps it, is able to compensate "to a certain extent" the technological gap relative to the West.
Wenmu's most controversial point is that "the advantage that only China enjoys of linking to markets of two oceans crashes the myth of Western 'naval power' in the contemporary era and introduces a revolutionary vision; the People's Republic is a great nation who possesses by nature the qualification of naval power." We just need to compare "how industrial development allowed the West to navigate towards the Indian Ocean" while China "arrived on foot."
Get TaiwanPresident Obama was keen to exhort at every opportunity the status of the US as a "Pacific nation." Imagine the US confronted by Wenmu's description: "The Western Pacific is linked to the national interests of the People's Republic and is the starting point of the New Maritime Silk Road." In fact, Chairman Mao talked about it way back in 1959: "One day, it does not matter when, the United States will have to retire from the rest of the world and will have to abandon the Western Pacific."
Extrapolating from Mao, Wenmu elaborates on a "Western Pacific Chinese Sea" uniting the South China Sea, the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea. "We can use the formula 'southern zone of the Western Pacific Chinese Sea' to describe the part that falls under Chinese sovereignty."
This suggests a combination of Chinese forces in the South China Sea, the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea under a sole Western Pacific naval command.
It's easy to see where all this is pointing: reunification with Taiwan.
Under such a system, as delineated by Wenmu, Taiwan "would return to the motherland," China's sovereignty over its coastline "would be legitimated" and at the same time "would not be excessively extended."
Beijing's supreme goal is to effectively move the "Chinese line of control" to the east of Taiwan. That reflects President Xi Jinping's speech earlier this week, where he referred to Taiwan, for all practical purposes, as the great prize. Wenmu frames it as an environment "where Chinese nuclear submarines are able to counter-attack, the construction of aircraft carriers can progress and products made in continental China may be exported effectively."
The barycenter of AsiaOne of the most fascinating arguments in Wenmu's essay is how he shows there's always a natural proportion a sort of 'divine' or 'golden ratio' between the three strategic powers in Eurasia: Europe, Central Asia and China.
Cue to a fast tour of the rise and fall of empires, with "history showing how in the main zone of the continent between 30 and 60 degrees of north[ern] latitude there can be only 2.5 strategic forces." Which means one of the three major spaces always becomes fragmented.
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