As China's navy grows, end of Deng's dictum of keeping a low profile?
Beijing's strategists, in responding to US domination of the oceans, are taking on board the ideas of a 19th century American historian
When American historian Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote his 1890 tome The Influence of Sea Power on History, 1660-1783, he could hardly have imagined that it would be influencing the leaders of distant China some 120 years later.
Delivering his keynote policy speech at the 18th party congress held in Beijing in November, Hu for the first time declared China's ambition to "build itself into a maritime power".
The comments were seen by some in the region and in the West as a manifesto for maritime expansion and an indirect response to a raft of escalating disputes between China and its neighbours in the South China Sea and the East China Sea. It also came against the backdrop of US President Barack Obama's "pivot to Asia".
In fact, Mahan's ideas have been discussed among Chinese think tank scholars and military strategists for years, as many of them believe the doctrine is the key to the "Chinese renaissance", a catchphrase uttered frequently by incoming president Xi Jinping . The establishment believes that becoming a "maritime power" is the "Chinese dream" - the way to end what has been called a "century of humiliation" at the hands of foreign powers.
An acclaimed documentary series well illustrated the changing perception of maritime affairs. A 2006 China Central Television production later shown by The History Channel, The Rise of Great Powers explained how the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, British, German, Japanese, Russian and American empires rose, prospered and fell. The documentary broke with decades of Communist Party historical ideology and revealed China's current pragmatism as a rising power intent on avoiding the arrogant blindness that left it weak for a long period starting in the 19th century.
It brings to an end a great historical trend that dates back six centuries, in which China withdrew inwards as European naval expansion spread Western influence worldwide.