Great post...but they used a pic several years old. You can tell by the pennant numbers all being black.I thought this is an excellent article. They are gaining experience in blue water operation and the tempo and frequency keep increasing year by year. I guess the dream to break out from the tyranny of 1st island is being realized. All those choke point will be heavily contested in the future
China Takes to the Blue Water
Posted on December 30, 2016By Todd Crowell, ,
Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main…
Beijing discards Mao’s instruction that the land outweighs the seas
The recent well-publicized venture by China’s first and so far only aircraft carrier, the Liaoningoutside of its familiar coastal waters into the western Pacific and off the coast of Taiwan, is a signal event in China’s ambition to field a true blue-water navy.
When China’s navy looks beyond its coastal waters, which it increasingly does, it sees a kind of Great Wall, except that, from their point of view, this wall is meant to keep China pinned in and not to keep the barbarians out. It is now seeking to break out beyond that wall.
The Chinese call this the “First Island Chain,” a line of islands, some small, others huge, extending from the Japan archipelago to the north, the Ryukyu island chain past Taiwan and the Philippines to the south. The waters within this arc are considered an integral part of China itself.
The Liaoning and its escorts, two frigates, four destroyers and an oiler, entered the open sea through the Miyako Channel, a wide strategically located strait between Okinawa and Miyakojima. They returned to China through the Bashi Strait separating Taiwan from the Philippines.
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They have long since changed all of those to the white-shadowed numbering like on US, Japanese, Australian, and other vessels.
