The Geography of Chinese Power
How Far Can Beijing Reach on Land and at Sea?
Article Summary and Author Biography
Thanks to the country’s favorable location on the map, China's influence is expanding on land and at sea, from Central Asia to the South China Sea and from the Russian Far East to the Indian Ocean.
ROBERT D. KAPLAN is a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a correspondent for The Atlantic. His book Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power will be published in the fall.
Author Interview
Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security Robert D. Kaplan answers questions about China's expanding naval power.
Snapshot
China's policy of aggression and coercion in the seas of the western Pacific long predates the high-profile incidents of recent weeks. If Washington hopes to counter Beijing's creeping power in the region, it will have to be firm and proactive in demonstrating its resolve.
The English geographer Sir Halford Mackinder ended his famous 1904 article, "The Geographical Pivot of History," with a disturbing reference to China. After explaining why Eurasia was the geostrategic fulcrum of world power, he posited that the Chinese, should they expand their power well beyond their borders, "might constitute the yellow peril to the world's freedom just because they would add an oceanic frontage to the resources of the great continent, an advantage as yet denied to the Russian tenant of the pivot region." Leaving aside the sentiment's racism, which was common for the era, as well as the hysterics sparked by the rise of a non-Western power at any time, Mackinder had a point: whereas Russia, that other Eurasian giant, basically was, and is still, a land power with an oceanic front blocked by ice, China, owing to a 9,000-mile temperate coastline with many good natural harbors, is both a land power and a sea power. (Mackinder actually feared that China might one day conquer Russia.) China's virtual reach extends from Central Asia, with all its mineral and hydrocarbon wealth, to the main shipping lanes of the Pacific Ocean. Later, in Democratic Ideals and Reality, Mackinder predicted that along with the United States and the United Kingdom, China would eventually guide the world by "building for a quarter of humanity a new civilization, neither quite Eastern nor quite Western."
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