China has yet to prove itself a sea power, just look at the Red Sea

Andrew Ward is a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy and is currently a Hudson Fellow at Oxford University’s Changing Character of War Centre where he is researching the early Cold War and its relevance for today’s power dynamics at sea.

Building a navy is insufficient to become a sea power. By some measures, the People’s Liberation Army Navy – the PLA(N) now exceeds the size of the US Navy but, while reams have been written on the growth of the Chinese Navy, at sea, experience, tactical acumen and reliable technology are the yardsticks of naval power.  

When the Houthis started attacking merchant ships in November 2023, Beijing faced a dilemma. Red Sea shipping benefits the Chinese economy as much if not more so than Europe and the United States. 2021’s closure of the Suez Canal for six days while authorities ungrounded the MV Ever Given showed the dependence of the global economy on maritime chokepoints. But intervention in the Red Sea would risk China’s decades-old policy of circumspection in the Middle East. Beijing may fear the diplomatic repercussions of seeming to support Israel by opposing the Houthi campaign in the Red Sea, or affecting its relationships with Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Nevertheless, the Houthi threat to the Red Sea represents a missed opportunity for China to announce itself as a global naval power. Xi Jinping followed Western navalist strategy in a 2013 address to the Politburo: “Historical experience tells us that countries that embrace the sea thrive, while states that spurn the sea decline.” 

China could have embraced the sea by repelling Houthi attacks on undefended merchant ships in the Red Sea, many on transit to or from Chinese ports. Aside from one hijacking, Houthi attacks on shipping to date have used uncrewed systems: missiles, UAVs and remote controlled skiffs. PLA(N) warships destroying these systems at sea would safeguard merchant ships under the legal justification of self defence, without the more politically contentious targeting of launch sites inside Yemen.      

The PLA(N) have clear capability to make a difference in the Red Sea, in particular, a standing patrol of three warships in the Gulf of Aden just beyond the strategically vital southern entrance to the Red Sea, the Bab-al-Mandeb strait. Locally, the Chinese are better set-up than Western navies, having opened a substantial military base in Djibouti in 2017.

China rebuffed an invitation to participate in the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian. This was despite China having been a nominal part of international anti-piracy operations in the Indian Ocean since 2008. There is regional precedent for competing maritime security frameworks: the Strait of Hormuz is patrolled by both the UK/US-led International Maritime Security Construct and the European Union’s Maritime Awareness in the Strait of Hormuz mission. The EU launched its own Red Sea mission, Operation Aspides, on 20 February 2024.   

The PLA(N) have not put together a naval operation. The ability to convene a military coalition is an example of great power politics at work. Except for occasional short duration exercises with Russia and Iran, China prefers a unilateral approach to maritime power. Nor do the Chinese carry out naval capacity building to strengthen partnerships from the bottom-up. Significant economic diplomacy under the sprawling Belt and Road Initiative, especially port investments in Sri Lanka and Pakistan could be complemented by a demonstration of PLA(N) naval power in the Red Sea. In turn, active Chinese naval operations would strengthen the case for Belt and Road ports becoming naval bases. A network of friendly ports for refuelling, rearming and repair are an essential feature of a superpower navy – something China lacks.

Perhaps the Chinese leadership, including the first naval officer to become Minister of Defence, Admiral Dong Jun, fear losing face in the Red Sea. Although the targets are unmanned, the risk of hitting a merchant ship or a passing civilian airliner can only be mitigated with exhaustive training, reliable technology and experience. With US-led coalitions like Prosperity Guardian, transiting carrier strike groups, Saudi-led coalition navies and Iranian patrols, the southern Red Sea has become a congested waterspace of overlapping states’ interests.  

Yet both operations Prosperity Guardian and Aspides, as well as Middle East coalition maritime operations are couched in terms of maritime security for the global good. Indeed, to keep disparate coalitions together, state-facing action is explicitly excluded from the mandate of coalition task force 150 which provides maritime security in the Arabian Sea. More likely, China is unwilling to act to uphold a rules-based approach to the high seas. One of the marks of a great power is exerting control and influence over the global commons through institutional rule-making and alliance-building. Operation Prosperity Guardian reinforces the public goods of maritime security and freedom of navigation, whereas Chinese attempts to create new norms in the South China Sea are opposed by near-neighbours and the international community alike. 

China’s failure to act in the Red Sea shows a misunderstanding of the peacetime purpose of a navy. Building a ‘fleet in being’ to threaten neighbours and intimidate adversaries is only the beginning; the navy is also a soft power instrument. Exercises with foreign warships are a breeding ground for alliance-building, encouraging comity at the strategic level. Operations like Prosperity Guardian are the hard power contribution of navies in operations short of full-scale war.  

To be fair, coastguard and maritime militia actions in the near seas show a Chinese appreciation of the totality of sea power. The PLA(N) are but one part of sea power defined in its broad sense: merchant ships, hydrographic survey, the construction of islands from reefs and sandbars, undersea cable infrastructure and the fishing fleet all play their part. Nevertheless, ships are only a means of sea power. The ways to increase national power with a navy are the kind of operations the United States and its allies are carrying out in the Red Sea today.  

The end goal of having a navy is the ability to exert control over the sea in times of peace and war. Aside from intimidating its neighbours around the South China Sea, the Chinese people are getting a poor return on substantial investment in the bluewater PLA(N). Chinese inaction in the Red Sea reinforces the status quo of US global leadership in 2024.   

The opinions expressed are those of the contributor, not of the RSAA.