Abstract
The rise of China in recent decades has taken place on an unprecedented scale and at a breathtaking a pace. Few, perhaps none, have gone so far so fast from weakness to strength. Especially the modernization of China’s Navy has been a focal point of debate regarding the evolving security environment in Asia. Deduced from defensive and offensive realism, this paper makes theoretically informed hypotheses and predicts corresponding naval force postures expected in each hypothesis. The hypotheses are then tested on the empirical data to explain China’s strategic behaviour and procurement patterns in the maritime domain. The findings are significant particularly in the development of two major constituents of the Chinese Navy, namely submarines and principal surface combatants. In these areas, the development of capabilities has taken place at a dramatic pace and breadth. The paper concludes that the naval capabilities of China have evolved in a manner exhibiting a power-maximising strategic behaviour in line with the revisionist disposition of great powers in offensive realism that accordingly corresponds with the predicted posture. As a whole, the empirical data presented in this paper is consistent with a tendency in the modernization of China’s Navy to establish itself as a dominant power in its maritime region.