China’s rekindled aspirations at sea:

In 2006 China Central Television showed a documentary series, Daguo Jueqi (The rise of great powers) (1), which was immediately successful. It included interviews with historians and international leaders and was considered accurate enough to be bought by the History Channel and broadcast in the United States. The 12 50-minute episodes explained how the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, British, German, Japanese, Russian and American empires rose, prospered and fell. The man behind the idea, Beijing university professor Qian Chengdan, understands its popular appeal in his own country: “It’s because China, the Chinese people, the Chinese race, has been revitalised and is once again on the world stage” (2).

Daguo Jueqi looks at the maritime achievements of the major powers in their rise to global dominance. Whatever the population, size or territory of the originating country, its strategy was always to open to the outside world, control the principal sea lanes and deep-water bases, and master technology, naval action and influence. Those are the Chinese government’s new priorities, laid down in the 2000 Maritime High Technology Plan and the parallel rise of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).

Pragmatism and diplomacy

The documentary broke with decades of Chinese Communist Party historical ideology and revealed China’s current pragmatism as that of a rising power intent on avoiding the arrogant blindness that left it in a long period of weakness in the 19th century. To influence the world in a “harmonious and peaceful” manner (two key words used in current policy), to open China to the world - and the world to China - appears to be Hu Jintao’s present creed. In an unprecedented effort of naval diplomacy in 2007, Chinese warships visited French, Australian, Japanese, Singaporean, Spanish and US ports and took part in joint manoeuvres against the threat of piracy.

Tibet has been vulnerable to outside powers for centuries, but now its troubles are internal:

“The country may be on the brink of an uprising but it lacks the political direction without which the Lhasa spring will never bear fruit.”