4. The Chinese Navy is not what it used to be

On April 23, 2009, the Chinese Navy held a grand naval parade in Qingdao, Shandong Province, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy. High-level naval delegations from 29 countries on five continents and as many as 21 warships of various types from 14 countries participated in the event, along with cutting-edge ships of the Chinese Navy.

This is the fourth large-scale naval parade in the history of the New China Navy, and it is also the first time that a multinational international naval parade has been held, which is of great significance. Holding such a grand ceremony of the naval parade can be said to be a handing over of China's business card to the blue ocean, and it is also a manifestation of China's deepening opening up to the outside world.

Near Qingdao, where the naval parade was held, is the famous Liugong Island in Weihai, where the Beiyang Fleet, once the most powerful in Asia, was destroyed 115 years ago, in 1894. 60 years ago, when Admiral Xiao Jinguang, the first commander of the Navy of New China, went to Liugong Island to inspect, because of the lack of naval equipment at that time, he had to take a fishing boat to board Liugong Island.

The period of 60 years is called a jiazi. Within this armor, the Chinese People's Liberation Army has developed from a traditional millet and rifle-style infantry-based combat force to today's navy, including surface ships, submarines, aviation, coastal defense forces, and marines.

On April 23, 1949, the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy was established, to be precise, the East China Navy. At that time, the East China Field Army was the Third Field Army, and the establishment of the East China Military Region Navy was announced at the Bainiang Temple in Taizhou, which was actually the first navy of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, and we regard the day of the establishment of the East China Navy today as the day of the birth of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy.

And this day is also the day when the Chinese People's Liberation Army occupied Nanjing, which is what Mao Zedong said in his poem, "Zhongshan is pale and yellow, and millions of heroes cross the river." The old regime collapsed and a new one was born. On this day, the Navy was founded, which has a great special significance.

At that time, when the Navy was established, on the other side of Qingdao, where the Navy Day was celebrated, was Weihai Liugong Island, and the two formed a very sharp contrast.

At that time, the Qing Dynasty established what can be said to be the most powerful navy in the Far East on Liugong Island, which was later wiped out in the Sino-Japanese First Sino-Japanese War, and did not play a very good role, and was basically wiped out.

Since its establishment and development to this day, the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy has basically followed the same path as our military, that is, from small to large, from weak to strong, and then from very poor equipment to cutting-edge. Since its establishment, the navy has fought many wars with rudimentary equipment, and basically the navy has never stopped fighting to safeguard the rights and interests of the country.

For example, in the early days of liberation, the Wanshan Naval Battle, and in 1955, when Yijiangshan Island was liberated, the navy played a very good role in joint operations by land, sea and air forces. The Battle of 86, the Chongwu Naval Battle, the Xisha Naval Battle, and the 14 March Naval Battle in Nansha were all a series of actions taken by the Navy to safeguard the rights and interests of the motherland, and the vast majority of these combat operations were fought against powerful forces with weak forces.

Our navy is in a relatively weak environment, because the navy is different from the army and the air force. For example, in the Army, if you give a soldier a gun, he is a fighting force; A pilot of the Air Force has an airplane, and this plane is loaded with bombs, whether it is air-dropped or air-launched, and a pilot piloting an airplane can also form a combat effectiveness, and of course its combat effectiveness is much more expensive than that of the Army.

But the most expensive is the navy, and the navy needs a ship, and the steel content of this ship and the number of personnel on it can be twisted into a rope and form a complete combat effectiveness.

Therefore, when we talk about joint operations, we are to a large extent talking about the army. To some extent, it can also be said that it is aimed at the Air Force. And the navy has long been a combined force.

When the navy sets sail, the ship includes engines, guns, navigation, all kinds of command, all kinds of weapons, and all kinds of decks and decks. That is to say, naval warships often require hundreds of people to move in unison in order to form a complete combat effectiveness. The submarine must have dozens of people moving in unison in order to form a complete combat force.

This demand of the navy, its technological content, the combat effectiveness formed by many people, and the large cost are different characteristics from those of the army and the air force.

Of course, this also brings about a problem, that is, the investment required for naval construction is relatively large, so relatively small countries, or countries with relatively weak economic strength, are often overstretched to build their navies.

For example, when the People's Republic of China was founded for a long time, we were actually not very wealthy, and in this case, our main task at that time was to defend our homeland, to prevent the United States from invading us from the east, and to counter-landing; To guard against the Soviet invasion of us from the northwest, north China, and northeast, the main consideration was land operations. Therefore, during the long period of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the investment in the navy was actually not very large.

In the Battle of the Paracels in 1974, we faced South Vietnam - we called it the South Vietnamese puppet army, South Vietnam sent the navy to forcibly occupy our Paracel Islands, its warships had a displacement of 1,500 tons, which was much larger than ours, and we dispatched submarine hunters and several minesweepers, all of which were within 1,000 tons, five or six hundred tons, and the tonnage was much smaller than it.

Although China was big and South Vietnam was small, its warships were big at that time, and we were much smaller than it. However, I think that in this war, we can see the appearance of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy, sweeping away the state of the Beiyang naval division that did not dare to fight, could not fight, could not fight, and was invincible.

In the Battle of the Paracels, our troops relied on rudimentary equipment, strafing with machine guns, and throwing grenades. Grenades are land weapons, and grenades were thrown in the Battle of Xisha Paracel. The two ships were very close to each other, and they were completely bayonet red at sea. At that time, it inflicted heavy losses on the South Vietnamese Navy, sank its warships, completed the victory in the Battle of the Paracels, and defended the territorial waters.

This was a very famous battle in which our navy defended national interests, and the equipment at that time was very rudimentary, the navy's long-term investment in construction was insufficient, and it went through the "Cultural Revolution," but the officers and men of the Chinese navy had this fighting spirit, and in fact, in the Battle of Xisha completely crushed the other side with their spirit.

After the Battle of Xisha was covered a lot by the international media. The South Vietnamese warships were sunk and felt humiliated, they said that we used Styx missiles, it was Styx anti-ship missiles that sank it, but in fact we were using machine guns and grenades.

Of course, on the one hand, this situation can be said to reflect the fighting spirit of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy, and on the other hand, we will never allow such a situation to occur again in the future.

We must strengthen the building of naval equipment, and there has been a very great development at present.

Through this naval parade marking the 60 th anniversary of the founding of the Navy, we can see that our Navy has developed by leaps and bounds over the past 60 years. In the past 10 years, the development rate has been the fastest. The development rate in the past seven or eight years and eight or nine years has exceeded the development speed of more than 50 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China. The core reason is that the country's comprehensive national strength has increased. Our economic output, fiscal revenue, and gross national income have developed very rapidly and have risen a lot. If you have money, you will have a better material foundation for building a strong navy, and it will not work without such a material foundation.

Navy Commander Wu Shengli said that the top priority in the construction of the People's Navy is to vigorously promote the overall transformation and enhance the core military capabilities at sea. This transformation is primarily based on national interests, national development and security needs.

Our navy has long been a coastal combat force, guarding against the enemy's landing, guarding against the invasion of the mainland by the United States and Chiang, and guarding against the enemy's landing in the Bohai Bay, Jiaodong Peninsula, Liaodong Peninsula, and Jiangsu. For a long time, the Navy was in a posture of near-shore defense, preventing the enemy from coming in.

However, from today's point of view, China's security environment has undergone very great changes, and with the increase of our national strength, the forces that dare to invade us today no longer exist. Our problem today is that a series of brand-new security demands have been put forward for the task of safeguarding the reunification of the motherland, the task of safeguarding maritime rights and interests, and the task of safeguarding the safety of our sea lanes.

If the navy still follows the idea of coastal defense construction in the past and waits for others to come in to prevent others from landing and preventing others from approaching us from the sea, it will no longer be able to accomplish the task we have to accomplish today. Our mission today requires our Navy to have a greater range of activities, a greater range of surveillance, a greater range of fire control.

There have also been internal debates in us before, such as the question of whether the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy should go to the Gulf of Aden to escort ships, whether it should go, and whether it is necessary to go. Many people say that we have not even fully managed the affairs at our doorstep, and we still have some disputes over maritime rights and interests, such as the East China Sea and the South China Sea.

Some comrades also said that our country has not yet completed reunification, so what are we doing in the Gulf of Aden? In fact, we feel today that when the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy successfully completed its escort mission in the Gulf of Aden and returned, we could see the role of the navy, which is China's fulfillment of its responsibilities as a major country in the new environment and under the conditions of the new century, and at the same time it is also an effective safeguard of our national interests.

For this kind of decision-making and responsibility, we must be mentally prepared on the one hand, and be prepared for ability on the other hand.

Ideological preparations should go hand in hand, and in fact complete the transformation of a mode of thinking, from the idea of a single coastal defense in the past to the protection of China's maritime rights and interests and China's national interests on a larger scale.

If we are not engaged in the navy, we may not be able to understand it, but from this angle, we can understand how to safeguard the national interests of our changing and developing countries. How our military forces, especially our maritime forces, can play their role well in safeguarding national interests is a glorious and arduous task for the Chinese Navy in the new century.

Attending the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Navy was Admiral Lovehead of the US Navy. Lovehead is the Chief of Naval Operations and is actually the number one person in the US Navy, which is a very friendly gesture made by the US Navy.

In addition, leaders of the navies of more than a dozen countries, including Russia, at all levels, have come to visit China, which is actually a gesture of friendship.

Of course, this gesture of friendliness also implies a focus on our strength. If it were only friendly, there would be no need for the United States to send the number one man in the Navy. From the perspective of the U.S. Navy, this is a sign of the respect that the Chinese Navy deserves for its rapidly developing Chinese navy and maritime power.

For example, when Wu Shengli, the commander of the Chinese Navy, visited the United States in April 2007, he received this kind of respect. The US Deputy Secretary of Defense welcomed him outside the Pentagon, and the US Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Chief of Naval Operations were waiting for him inside the Pentagon.

This is by no means the personal respect of the Pentagon or the US tri-service system for Commander Wu Shengli, which is the respect of the highest US military authorities for the naval strength of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. This kind of respect between military personnel is by no means just a matter of etiquette, it is first of all an understanding of your strength, and the second is an acknowledgment of your strength, which is very important. Only with this full recognition and recognition can a country really be able to maintain its own security.

As a landlocked country, China has 20,000 kilometers of land territory, but we still have 18,000 kilometers of sea territory.

Our education from primary school to university is enough propaganda about land Xinjiang, and every Chinese knows that we have 9.6 million square kilometers of territory, which refers to our land territory. But from primary school to university, quite a lot of people don't know that we have 3 million square kilometers of maritime rights, which is our maritime frontier.

The 12-nautical-mile territorial sea, then the adjoining economic zone, then the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone, which is defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and we have 3 million square kilometers of maritime interests.

This is a problem that does exist in our education, and in fact it has an impact on the cause of a nation. Our concept of every inch of land seems to be enough to hold on to every inch of land, and in fact, the United Nations has also assigned it to the scope of maritime rights and interests under our jurisdiction. The 3 million square kilometers of marine rights and interests include the oil and gas structure of the seabed, the manganese nodules on the seabed, the use of seawater tides, etc., not to mention fishery resources.

In fact, the ocean is a natural treasure trove for human development, and we do not know enough about this part.

According to the long-term historical experience of the Chinese nation, our main danger comes from the sea. In 1840, when the imperialist countries invaded from the sea, the Eight-Nation Alliance, Britain and France forced us to sign humiliating treaties, the Treaty of Nanking of the First Opium War, and the Treaty of Peking of the Second Opium War. So we are used to seeing the sea as the direction of the threat.

Today, we see that the ocean is not the direction of threat, but the direction of development. This is a big shift in the thinking of a nation. Of course, there are security threats, but overall, is there the ability to overcome them? It is with this in mind that we are building our navy. The Chinese have the ability to protect their maritime rights and interests, and only under such circumstances can the ocean truly be regarded as a direction of development.

This change in perception is not only for the military, of course, but also for the localities.

The Navy Festival is a very good opportunity, through the Navy Festival, on a small scale, let the people and the world know about the construction of the new Chinese navy; On a larger scale, in fact, let our people understand China's maritime rights and interests from a larger scope, and also let the world see from a larger scope that Chinese their understanding of their own maritime rights and interests and their determination to defend their maritime rights and interests.