So what has changed now? Simply put, technological advancements, especially in aerospace and radio (radar technology), have made the battlefield transparent. Today, China fears no maritime threats because it has the eyes to penetrate the fog of war (space-based satellites + advanced radar networks) and rapidly mobile strike weapons, including various missiles, especially ASBMs. The ability to see and strike maritime targets across the entire operational range is what enables China, a land power, to potentially win a maritime war.
Compared to land warfare systems, maritime power has never truly possessed overwhelming force (assuming the weapon generation gap isn’t too large—attacking a small country with only a few million people is always winnable, but such small countries can hardly be said to possess land power). Therefore, if maritime power isn’t primarily about harassment, it has never been truly fearsome. The Eight-Nation Alliance understood this 150–180 years ago. Their victory over China had many preconditions, including that China’s ruling class was already in the late stage of dynastic transition. Even then, they didn’t achieve true occupation of Chinese territory, similar to Japan’s later invasion. Land powers can only be defeated on land by maritime powers when they are in internal turmoil.
Looking at history today, before the founding of New China, China’s ruling class, like some so-called moderate democrats in Iran, harbored illusions about the West, constantly compromising and conceding interests in exchange for temporary security, only to be betrayed time and again.
Thus, in China’s view, future wars will likely involve maritime blockades of Chinese trade far from its coastline, similar to Ming Dynasty wokou harassing China’s coast. For China, competing with the U.S. to build 800 global bases is unnecessary—such bases are just targets, with little real significance.
The real solution is simple: destroy the U.S.’s maritime military capabilities on a large scale. Without naval vessels, or with a maritime force confined to U.S. coastal waters, what deterrent does U.S. hegemony have? In fact, there’s no need to go globally destroying U.S. maritime power. Ray Dalio of Bridgewater has pointed out—and Wall Street now realizes—that the U.S.-Iran war has begun. If the U.S. cannot ultimately control the Strait of Hormuz, the petrodollar will immediately collapse, the U.S. debt crisis will erupt, and the U.S.’s post-WWII global hegemony will instantly crumble. There will be no more U.S. superpower.
Do you understand now? The ultra-long-range ASBM tool is a military instrument to thoroughly dismantle unilateral maritime hegemony, and to end the 400-year Western maritime system (which controls global trade in the industrial era through maritime dominance). Russia has no maritime power; Australia has no maritime power; the dozens of European countries have no maritime power. The true maritime powers are essentially the U.S.+ Europe/Australia/New Zealand/Japan(NATO), and others, who are likely to join the U.S. in blockading China. Ultra-long-range ASBMs are the tools to destroy the fleets and ports executing this so-called maritime blockade.
Clever people might ask: couldn’t others develop ASBMs to target China? I’ll tell you: this tool is only useful for foolish countries seeking hegemony. China has no interest in such hegemony because it understands clearly that such stupid goals only accelerate national decline. If you want to die early despite your country living long and well, go seek hegemony. Looking at Chinese history, the U.S. reached its peak hegemony less than 40 years ago and is already in decline. The Mongol armies that swept through Europe lasted only about a century. Thus, for a society with deep historical awareness like China’s, hegemony is the most foolish goal.
It’s simple: don’t stir up trouble, and there won’t be so many ASBMs targeting your warships. Moreover, China’s industrial scale and retaliatory capability mean it isn’t worried about such threats. Even if other countries develop advanced ASBMs, they pose little threat to China.
That’s why I say ultra-long-range ASBMs are strategic tools to end superpower hegemony—by globally eliminating the navies that underpin hegemony, they terminate the actual existence of hegemony (maritime blockade capability).
P.S. Let me add: I was actually the first to discover the existence of ultra-long-range ASBMs. Ten years ago, in a thesis from the PLA Naval Command College (Dalian), I came across research on using seven re-entry maneuverable warheads with re-entry speeds exceeding 7,000 m/s (the speed of ICBM re-entry vehicles) for cluster strikes against maritime targets. Back then, I posted about it under the title “DF-31 Variant ASBM,” which was even picked up by overseas media.
