The Modernisation of the Chinese Navy: the Rise of a Great Naval Power

What we have witnessed over the last two decades is one of the greatest episodes of naval expansion in modern history, a trend that is only set to continue. The PLA(N) is now the world’s largest navy, and with increasingly modern classes of vessels, China will very soon be in a position to challenge the United States for global naval hegemony. But why did this happen? How did a land power grow to become a competitor to the greatest naval power in human history so fast? This documentary explores the modern history of China’s relationship with the ocean, the development of Chinese naval strategy and the new classes of ships and submarines that have led to the emergence of a new great naval power. The stage is set for the first half of the 21st century to be a historic contest between Beijing and Washington for the position of global hegemon, and it is China’s navy which is the foundation of that challenge.

0:00 China's Relationship with the Sea
10:00 China's Maritime Strategy
19:06 The A2/AD Complex
33:35 Capital Ships
45:49 Cruisers and Destroyers
51:17 Frigates and Corvettes
54:25 Submarines
1:03:11 The Fight for Global Naval Hegemony

[bg]

This is a humongous undertaking. You covered both PLA space force and PLA navy on top of intelligence gathering and geopolitics. What a treat! One comment if I may: as a policy, PLA doesn’t disclose their weapons’ capability, unless it’s for sale. Lot of information are estimates.

[SgtAndrewM]

These documentaries are better than tv

[aussietaipan]

Love your work mate. This was the last video of yours my late father saw before he passed away in Jan 2022 age 98 (almost).

[AAAAAA-tjnq]

First, the J-15 was critiqued for being unable to takeoff with a payload of 12 tons, but such a payload capacity was never associated with the aircraft, which has the same 6.5 ton payload as the Su-33. It was also argued that its inability to carry 12 tons meant the J-15 couldn’t be armed with the PL-12 beyond visual range missile (BVRAAM) – despite the PL-12 weighing 200 kilograms, about one-60th of the supposed requisite 12 ton capacity. The article also claimed that a J-15 fully loaded with internal fuel could only carry a two-ton payload, limiting the aircraft to two YJ-83K anti-ship missiles and two PL-8 short range missiles (SRAAMs). In actuality, two tons is sufficient to carry two YJ-83K family missiles, two PL-8 SRAAMs, and also at least two additional PL-12 missiles with pylons all inclusive. Finally, the article asserted the J-15 would somehow be limited to only “120 kilometers of attack range” – a curious claim, given that its combat radius with full internal fuel would enable a reach of over 1, 200 kilometers, and the range of an air launched YJ-83K alone would reach approximately 200 kilometers to begin with.

[mathiasnowts]

Beijing's conundrum, overestimating projected Chinese military capabilities I find equally daunting to underestimating them.

[channingdeadnight]

as much as there is to complain about the economic effort china accomplished during the 20th century was unique. the quality of life and ecoonomic position of hundreds of millions of citizens in such a short period of time is the closest thing to an actual miracle the world has ever seen. the average chinese citizen so the largest increase of wealth any single generation on earth has experienced. they also managed to accomplish this feat twice as fast as any nation then any of the very few nations before them has even come close to. both the speed and increase of the quality of life for the average Chinese citizen was the singular greatest economic feat any nation has managed in mankinds history.

[wilsc]

A useful summary although several inaccuracies such as using the wrong designation (e.g. Han class is 091, not Type 95, and the image for the Song class was actually an early variant of the Yuan).

[s]

You done a great job yet again. Thank you and keep up the great work.
I’m hoping some of the people in Canberra see this too and identify the lessons here.

[Adept]

7:00 as an added bit of nuance, during the economic expansion of China. The US lead a coalition in the first gulf war (1995). The effectiveness of that campaign may have lead China to reassess its defencive needs in terms of advanced naval and missile forces.
9:00 These moves to expand and modernize its forces were put into a new more expansionist strategic concept after 2008. China potentially saw the politically bitter and fragmented response to the financial crisis as carte blanche to reshape its area.

These are not my original ideas, just me summarizing what I remember from some thinktanks youtube video, probably the Hundsion Institute or CSIS.

[therover]

The author over emphasised the political reasons for retaking Taiwan and grossly underrated the strategic reasons for retaking the island. Taiwan independence would turn the island into a US military base the directly threatens the mainland.

[vikinger]

My complement, sofar the best and balanced in-depth evaluation of Chinese naval development by a western analyst. Many shortcomings of realtime targeting information by the known system like satellite and over the horizon radar pointed out by the author are very correct, and therefore the focus of new development of UAV like WZ-8, which is a rocket powered, launched from H6, supersonic UAV collecting the position of large naval ships.

[con]

I think you really missed the ethnic nationalism that plays into current Chinese thought. Claims to Taiwan are less about historical territorial control and more about a common people being separated unfairly. The language Xi uses when talking about Taiwan reminds me much more of the Romantic Nationalism and revanchism/irredentism of the 19th century than anything else.

I'd also be interested to know what role sea gliders play in the recon stage of A2AD.

Your closing statements where interesting. Imo there is nothing the US can do to maintain its technological edge over China, no amount of investment can overcome the challenge as both nations are largely drawing on the same talent pool. The USSR struggled because it had so little connection to the outside world, its engineers alone had to solve the technological challenges of their arms race with no outside help, it was inevitable that they would fall behind in a range of areas (computers especially). China on the other hand has a massive educational exchange with the West. The engineers at Lockheed and Raytheon are no better than their Chinese counterparts, they all go to Harvard now. The same could not be said the engineers of the USSR.

[obsidianstatue]

Several small/medium mistakes
2:35 Japan's invasion of China started in 1931 through the invasion of Manchuria, and full on total war started in 1937, not 1939
13:06 China's claim is not only historical claim. It's also the fact that the Chinese Civil war never ended, not even an armistice was signed, literally nothing was signed.
In fact at least the Korean war often claimed to be an ongoing conflict, had signed an armistice.
So the claim is to END the Chinese civil war through unification, by all means.

13:57 No, the unification of Taiwan is NOT about democracy, the idea of applying a system that worked for Taiwan, a place with a population smaller than Shanghai to the entirety of China with 1.4 billion people is outlandishly unrealistic

Also speaking from experience, mainland Chinese do not see Taiwan as a model to emulate, in fact animosity towards the island is at an all time high.
Believe it or not, it is NOT because of government propaganda, rather the Taiwanese borderline racist attitude towards Mainland China. This applies to Hong Kong too.
Before you say it, YES members from the same "race" can be racist towards each other, just look at the numerous racially driven massacres in Africa, where they belong to the same "race" but different tribes
Same type of racism existed between the English and the Irish. or America's attitude towards Italian immigrants during the early 20th century.

29:03 that's just not correct at all, you don't need to drop your speed down to supersonic speed. A low hypersonic speed of around Mach 5 to 7 is the target for many hypersonic missiles, you can't claim it would work for the US and not for China

Also since the fastest intercepting missile can barely reach that speed. meaning it's next to impossible to shoot it down
I find the argument of "Chinese weapons aren't good because it's made in China" rather tiresome.

While it ignores the fact that the US sea based missile defense VLS has NEVER been tested in war until 2016, when it went up against 2 old Iranian subsonic missiles fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen.
On that front, neither the Chinese nor the American system are fully tested for war, But I would bet on untested offensive weapon than an untested defensive weapon

36:46 that's not the Shandong CV17 it's the Liaoning CV16

39:38 that's just not correct
by 2035, China would have at least 5 maybe 6 carriers, as of now, China basically has 3 carriers, 2 commissioned and 1 about to leave the drydock. China is more than capable of building 2 more carriers in the next 15 years.
It took China around 15 years to build the 3 carriers of today. And that's only utilizing ONE of the 2 available shipyards that can construct a carrier, one in Dalian and one in Shanghai.

Chinese military spending is well below 2% of the GDP, there is massive room to grow if the government sees it necessary, the "slowing" economic GDP growth is the government trying to change the growth model from an investment driven to a consumption drive.
This would yield slower but higher quality and more sustainable growth. regardless, the idea of China running out of money is ridiculous.

43:59 The Type 076, a LHD with EMALS catapults is not really a vaporware, though not confirmed, it is very likely, because procurement info about a Catapult system for a naval platform was posted on the official PLA website.
If China is able to fit 3 electromagnetic catapults on the Type003 carrier that is conventionally powered, there is no reason to believe that 1 or 2 catapults couldn't fit on a 50, 000 ton+ LHD, after all that would be a larger ship than the French carrier Charles De Gualle

49:25 The ZKJ battle management system is supposedly derived from the Italian IPN-10. which was exported to China in 1985, to claim China haven't built on that over the decades is simply unrealistic.
considering China's massive strides in the past 20 years in terms of communication and software technologies, it is not hard to imagine China fielding some very capable battle management systems.

Conclusion, China's strategy is NOT to defeat the US, after all why would you want to kill your biggest customer?
The aim for China is to supplant the position of the US without firing a bullet. that involves dethroning the US dollar as the global reserve currency, Many Chinese economist that are well connected with Beijing have already came out saying this goal explicitly.

Without the US dollar as the reserve currency, the US would find it impossible to maintain the size of the American military. It won't relegate America to the dustbin of history, but would GREATLY diminish their power projection capabilities.

[simonyip]

When you said that it took the PLA Navy 6 years to achieve IOC of the CV 16 Liaoning (the vessel was commissioned in 2012, it was declared combat capable in 2018), the thing to remember is that the Liaoning was officially classed as a Training Ship when it was first commissioned, it wasn't expected to be a fully capable combat carrier originally.

As far as I know, the PLA Navy wanted to deploy carriers since the early 1980's, they examined operational carriers of other navies (when possible), as well as bought quite a few decommissioned carriers for scrapping or converting into other roles. They have had mock ups of carrier landing decks built in several places, where they were training potential future carrier based pilots long before they ever had a real carrier in their fleet.

My point is that they are fully aware of the skills needed and the experience required to enable aircraft carriers to be operated safely and effectively.

The growth and development of the PLA, looking back in retrospect, at how they went from obsolete types of submarines, surface ships, auxiliaries and support vessels back in the late 1980's, to having large numbers of world class types of SSBN/SSN/SSK/DDG/CGM/FFG and AOR/LSH/LPD etc within 20-30 years makes me believe that they know exactly what they are doing.

Also the HHQ-16B carried by the 054A, 052B, 051B and the Fuzhou DDG have a range of 70km+ (compared to the HHQ-16 variant that has 40km range).

[colinyuan]

to the north, there is Russian, to the east, there is American and Japanese, and to the south, Indian and Australian is coming, so as a Chinese, it's quiet important to keep a powerful navy to protect our own interest

[Splash]

You consistently keep the content at such a high level. Kinda wish college credit could be given for viewing these, with a test afterwards of course.
Thank you for allowing us to be the beneficiaries of all your hard work.

[hasumi]

Very professional video, better than most YouTube analysis, I already subscribed, I hope this channel can thrive

[fbnaccsequence]

I have come to expect nothing less than intelligent informed analysis, and you don't disappoint. Your discussion of the issues surrounding the Chinese use of ASBMs was well-reasoned, and to the point, as good as any briefing that I could have received.

[Stoogis]

I know this is petty and I love all the effort and quality of this video: buuuut Qing isn't pronounced King but is basically Ching.

[maxpattio]

I see a hypohystericalhistory video on a naval topic, I click! This is quite interesting and certainly relevant given our current strategic environment. I know you mentioned it as a previous potential topic (And I'm not sure if you did one of the Tiktok videos) but I'd love to see a video about the Arafura's/Evolved Capes.