Sea Monster or Kite? The Chinese Navy in 2023
Copyright (c) 2024 Gábor Antal
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Abstract
One of the big issues of the early 21st century is China’s role in security policy. What power does it have, how much and for what purposes is it willing to use it? In this paper I want to examine an important aspect of this question, the Chinese naval forces. After a historical overview, I will present the most recent current information on the Chinese navy, based on open-source documents compiled by the Congressional Research Service, the United States Department of Defense, and the Office of Naval Intelligence. These sources are the latest data available at the time of writing (November 2023). My conclusions from the data are presented at the end of this paper.