China’s Island Chain Strategy
For 3,000 years, China’s overall strategy was to defend against invaders from the West and the North, but to turn its back on the Pacific.
In the early 1990s, the Chief of China’s Naval Staff, Admiral Liu Huaqing, changed this almost overnight by advocating a complete turnaround in China’s military posture to take on the world’s only superpower, with a long-term naval armament programme.