China. Zhongguo ren min jie fang jun. Hai jun. - Six years at sea ... and counting: Gulf of Aden anti-piracy and Chinas maritime commons presence

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Table of Contents

Table of Contents

List of Exhibits

Advance Evaluations

During a six-year effort, Chinas navy overcame limited basing options and logistical nightmares to implement a successful anti-piracy campaign in the Gulf of Aden. The authors prove that China has the ability to conduct long-range naval operations far from home and explain how these operations now have far reaching strategic implications.

Wendell Minnick, Asia Bureau Chief, Defense News

A lucid analysis of Chinas six years experience in anti-piracy activities in the Gulf of Aden, detailing the breakthroughs it has achieved in out-of-area operations, logistics, and international cooperation. Erickson and Strange place these activities in the context of the PRCs Far Seas naval diplomacy and the solidification of the PRCs emergence as a maritime power.

Prof. June Teufel Dreyer, Dept. of Political Science, University of Miami

The longest enduring Far Seas mission Chinas Navy has ever conducted is its continuing six-year participation in the multinational Gulf of Aden anti-piracy operations. The implications of what the Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and Beijing are learning from this experience to be applied in the future are central issues in Chinas defense and foreign policies. Building on their earlier monograph No Substitute for Experience joined with meticulous exploitation of Chinese sources and interviews with PLAN officers, Erickson and Strange have prepared detailed descriptions of PLAN antipiracy operations over the years since 2008 and the ensuing deliberations inside China. Their assessments are therefore indispensable reading to understand what issues Beijing confronts as it weighs the future employment of what is an emerging global Navy in support of Chinas rapidly expanding national interests.

Paul H.B. Godwin, Professor, National War College (ret.)

Throughout history, great powers have been interested in piracy as much for the advantages suppression can give them in the game of nations as in the more journeyman task of protecting trade. Erickson and Strange bring out clearly that modern China is no exception. The story of the Chinese Navys deployment to counter the activities of pirates off Somalia demonstrated in the most visible terms that while it may not yet be a globally deployed fleet it is a globally capable one. The authors have drawn on a wealth of Chinese-language documents to show how over nearly twenty deployments to the region Chinas long-standing ambition to be able to operate across the worlds oceans has been advanced by building an experiential platform from which to challenge its Asian neighbors and eventually the U.S. Navy. This book needs to be read by anyone interested in the part China played in quelling Somali piracy and in its seminal role in the rise of a new naval competitor.

Martin N. Murphy, author of Somalia, the New Barbary? Piracy and Islam off the Horn of Africa and Small Boats, Weak States and Dirty Money: Piracy and Maritime Terrorism in the Modern World

PLA Navy watchers owe a debt of gratitude to Andrew Erickson and Austin Strange. Their monograph, Six Years at Sea...and Counting: Gulf of Aden Anti-Piracy and Chinas maritime Commons Presence, gathers under one cover the best single appreciation of how important anti-piracy operations have been to both Chinas reputation is a global responsible stakeholder a well as to the development of the PLA Navy to a more balanced navy. After six years of far seas operations it would be a mistake to pigeon-hole Chinas Navy as strictly a regional force. Anti-piracy operations in the Arabian Sea have permitted the PLA Navy to make huge strides in its ability to conduct far seas operations. These operations started in December 2008, which will be remembered as a key historic milestone in the evolution of the PLA Navy. It marked the beginning of the evolution of the PLAN from a coastal defense force to one that can join the great navies of the world in being able to conduct sustained operations in areas half way around the world from its home waters.

The antipiracy patrols permit the PLAN to learn how to sustain warships on a distant station for months at a time. They have learned what works and what doesnt; what capabilities ships should be fitted with to be combat credible when on extended operations; what pieces of equipment and combat systems are reliable and what ones are not; and how to logistically sustain surface combatants, amphibious ships, and support ships for months at a timeover nine months in some cases. China has learned the value of naval diplomacy which the PLAN has practiced relentlessly along the entire Indian Ocean littoral and into the Mediterranean and Black Seas.

In short, the PLAN learning curve has been impressive; it has absorbed lessons quickly because the anti-piracy patrols are a real world battle-laboratory for the PLAN, providing it an opportunity to observe the day-to-day operations of most of the worlds leading navies and absorb best practices for its own use. This monograph is an important addition to our understanding of the evolution of the PLAN.

RADM Michael McDevitt, USN (ret.), Senior Fellow, Center for Naval Analyses

Andrew Erickson, the indefatigable and brilliant observer of Chinas Navy, has scored another important success. Working with Austin Strange, Erickson has written a landmark study on Chinas six years of counter-piracy operations in the far seas of the Gulf of Aden. Erickson assesses the benefits to Chinas new naval power of its experiences on the high seas, benefits that signifies the emergence of the PLA Navy as a global force to be reckoned with.