New era of the Chinese PLA Navy

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Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday inspected a massive international maritime parade in east China's Qingdao, as the country celebrated the 70th anniversary of the founding of its naval force. China's latest nuclear submarines, destroyers, and fighter jets all made their debut.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said at Tuesday's inspection, when he met with the foreign delegations, that China pursues a national defense policy that is defensive in nature and champions new thinking on common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security.

Huang Jing, dean of the Institute for International and Regional Studies from Beijing Language and Culture University, said that we can read new information from the speech, which implies that China is now a global power. As China's naval strength grows, so will the range of its military's defenses, and its strategy will be adjusted accordingly.

Zhu Chenghu, a former professor from the National Defense University of the PLA, agreed with Huang Jing, adding that compared to the old thinking which is called "collective security," constructed by America and its allies, "collective security is based on the insecurity of other countries which are not the members of the allies."

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Secondly, not only is the thinking new, the practice is new too because common security cannot be implemented by China itself. It will need cooperative practice from other countries. In other words, security is not something you can achieve unilaterally, for it needs multilateral cooperation.

"Although China does not want any allies," said Huang Jing, "it does not mean China will do it alone," because China is deeply integrated into the world today, so if other nations are insecure, China also won't feel safe.

Talking about Russia sending vessels to the parade, Pavel Felgenhauer, a Russian defense analyst, said that Russia does not only send ships to be paraded, it also uses the occasion as a chance to examine the ability of its marine troops.

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Felgenhauer also stressed the important difference between a brown-water navy and blue-water navy. When the troops are near the coast, the land can provide air support. However, the land cannot offer air support when the troops are sailing into the deep sea.

Now China demonstrated that they can build aircraft carriers, which is one of the most expensive weapon systems. It has changed its strategy significantly.

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