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Mao's Army Goes to Sea: The Island Campaigns and the Founding of China's Navy
The first detailed book in the West about the founding of China's navy and the significance of that founding era today
From 1949 to 1950, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) made crucial decisions to establish a navy and secure China's periphery. The civil war had been fought with a peasant army, yet to capture key offshore islands from the Nationalist rival, Mao Zedong needed to develop maritime capabilities. Mao's Army Goes to Sea is a groundbreaking history of the founding of the Chinese navy and Communist China's earliest island-seizing campaigns.
By providing the definitive account of this little-known yet critical moment in China's naval history, author Toshi Yoshihara shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the People's Republic of China paid close attention to naval affairs during its earliest years. Chinese leaders possessed a clear vision and independent agency, refashioning the stratagems and tactics honed over decades of revolutionary struggle on land for nautical purposes. Despite serious material shortcomings, a lack of formal naval training, and some early military disasters, the PLA ultimately scored important victories over its Nationalist foes as it captured offshore islands to secure its position.
Drawing extensively from newly available Chinese-language sources, this book reveals how the navy-building process, sea battles, and contested offshore landings had a lasting influence on the PLA. Even today, the institution's identity, strategy, doctrine, and structure are conditioned by these early experiences and myths. Mao's Army Goes to Sea will help US policymakers and scholars place China's recent maritime achievements in proper historical context ― and provide insight into how its navy may act in the future.
From 1949 to 1950, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) made crucial decisions to establish a navy and secure China's periphery. The civil war had been fought with a peasant army, yet to capture key offshore islands from the Nationalist rival, Mao Zedong needed to develop maritime capabilities. Mao's Army Goes to Sea is a groundbreaking history of the founding of the Chinese navy and Communist China's earliest island-seizing campaigns.
By providing the definitive account of this little-known yet critical moment in China's naval history, author Toshi Yoshihara shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the People's Republic of China paid close attention to naval affairs during its earliest years. Chinese leaders possessed a clear vision and independent agency, refashioning the stratagems and tactics honed over decades of revolutionary struggle on land for nautical purposes. Despite serious material shortcomings, a lack of formal naval training, and some early military disasters, the PLA ultimately scored important victories over its Nationalist foes as it captured offshore islands to secure its position.
Drawing extensively from newly available Chinese-language sources, this book reveals how the navy-building process, sea battles, and contested offshore landings had a lasting influence on the PLA. Even today, the institution's identity, strategy, doctrine, and structure are conditioned by these early experiences and myths. Mao's Army Goes to Sea will help US policymakers and scholars place China's recent maritime achievements in proper historical context ― and provide insight into how its navy may act in the future.
200 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 2, 2024
What Yoshihara seemed to promise with this monograph was an analysis that connected the establishment of the People's Liberation Army Navy with contemporary policy. In that respect we have a winner, in that the parallels between the first Maoist naval operations to clear the islands of the Chinese mainland, with current Chinese naval operations are quite clear. What with the "nibbling" to create a bigger zone of control (one island at a time), the fusion of all maritime assets (naval, para-military, and civilian), and a tendency to improvisation.
The author also makes a good argument that the establishment of the Chinese Red Navy was no afterthought, and was never merely a branch of the PLA, though the resources might have been slim. Traditions were definitely established in 1949-50 that continue to have an institutional impact. Even with the increasing interest in "Blue Water" operations.
Most important though is that one can now piece together a good first overview of the campaign of reduction against the off-shore bastions of the KMT, and how the PLAN did learn from its mistakes, and there were many. This is even though Yoshihara suspects that the Chinese authorities are being economical about the truth regarding battle casualties and the Soviet influence in their semi-open literature. I'm left with little doubt that if the decision is made to try and take Taiwan by main force, it will be carefully planned and with a clear-eyed sense of reality; unless the higher leadership feels a desperate need to stage a security "spectacular."
The author also makes a good argument that the establishment of the Chinese Red Navy was no afterthought, and was never merely a branch of the PLA, though the resources might have been slim. Traditions were definitely established in 1949-50 that continue to have an institutional impact. Even with the increasing interest in "Blue Water" operations.
Most important though is that one can now piece together a good first overview of the campaign of reduction against the off-shore bastions of the KMT, and how the PLAN did learn from its mistakes, and there were many. This is even though Yoshihara suspects that the Chinese authorities are being economical about the truth regarding battle casualties and the Soviet influence in their semi-open literature. I'm left with little doubt that if the decision is made to try and take Taiwan by main force, it will be carefully planned and with a clear-eyed sense of reality; unless the higher leadership feels a desperate need to stage a security "spectacular."
October 7, 2023
In this novel work of scholarship, Toshi Yoshihara, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, describes the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) cultivation of sea power as a means of prosecuting a campaign of national integration. Using a variety of Chinese language sources, corroborated with US and Taiwanese sources, Yoshihara describes the formation of an inchoate naval doctrine and force structure in Mao’s armed forces, and subsequent historiographical interpretation of such developments by the Chinese government to inform its contemporary geopolitical postures. Mao’s Army Goes to Sea describes the PLA’s naval construction from scratch in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War. It describes the series of island seizures, amphibious operations and sabotage campaigns that led to PLA naval success is Xiamen and Hainan, but also the staggering tactical blunders which led to failures such as the Jimnen assaults. Yoshihara’s contributions greatly expand the literature on China’s naval history, which until now has been greatly deficient - and critically partial where it does exist - in Western scholarship.
January 21, 2024
A well-organized history of an unfamiliar period. Would benefit from an appendix that introduced the characters and a wiring diagram of the overall command structure, since it wasn't always clear to me. Still, very useful in showing the ways in which the CCP innovated and their determination to win the island campaigns.
WHO DECIDED SCREWED UP CAPCHAS WERE A GOOD IDEA?
WHO DECIDED SCREWED UP CAPCHAS WERE A GOOD IDEA?
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews