China as a Sea Power, 1127-1368: A Preliminary Survey of the Maritime Expansion and Naval Exploits of the Chinese People During the Southern Song and Yuan Periods

Foreword

Foreword  In the field of China studies, one of the most important unanswered questions is whether Beijing does or does not have the strategic ambition to acquire a blue water navy, the first step to becoming an acknowledged maritime power. To date, China clearly has historical desires for a great navy, has a viable naval acquisition program to build one, has adopted major structural reforms to make the organization of a modern navy possible, has clearly defined regional maritime strategic goals, and has apparently adopted a timetable for how to obtain these goals. However, the reason “why” China would desire a blue water navy is a much more elusive question. One major reason explaining why Beijing might want to acquire such an asset is to obtain the rank, fame, or power that goes along with this military capability. Most great powers have navies, so if China hopes to be included in this exclusive club then it must follow suit. But if Beijing builds such a naval fleet, then China may one day become a dangerous peer competitor of the United States, which could lead to conflict. The value of publishing Dr. Lo Jung-pang’s book at this particular time, therefore, is to shed light on China’s previous attempts to become a sea power. Dr. Lo examines a particularly important period in Chinese history, during the Southern Song, Yuan, and early Ming dynasties, when — in his words — China was “more of a sea power than a land power.” If Chinese leaders today do indeed have the ambition of building an oceangoing navy, then understanding this earlier period of Chinese history is particularly important. If China succeeds, then it may soon become the most important twenty-first-century maritime rising power, certainly challenging and perhaps overpowering U.S. national interests in the Pacific and perhaps even globally. * * * Lo Jung-pang was born in Beijing, PRC, on 28 September 1912, the same year the Manchus abdicated and Sun Yat-sen founded the Republic of China_Sea Power Prelims.indd 10 2/17/2012 1:37:37 PM Foreword xi China. His father was a diplomat, so as a young child Jung-pang lived and was educated in a number of countries — England, Canada, and Singapore. He graduated from Yenching University in Beijing in 1934, and after emigrating to the U.S. during the mid-1930s, earned his M.A. in History from UC Berkeley in 1940, and — after serving during World War II in the Office of War Information in San Francisco — his Ph.D. in 1957. Along the way, he taught at Swarthmore, University of Michigan, and at the University of Washington, finishing his academic career as a tenured professor of Chinese history at the University of California, Davis. Interestingly, Jung-pang’s father, Lo Chong, was married to Kang Tongbi (Kang Tung Pih), daughter of K’ang Yu-wei, one of China’s most famous nineteenth-century reformers. As a child, Jung-pang spent time with K’ang Yu-wei, and later told his own children stories about boating with his grandfather. Many years later, Jung-pang authored the well-known book K’ang Yu-wei: A biography and a symposium (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1967). While he is perhaps best known for his K’ang Yu-wei book, it turns out that Jung-pang’s real interest was Chinese maritime history. While still a graduate student, he began to assist Joseph Needham by writing analytical pieces about China’s navy that were used in Needham’s ground-breaking book Science and Civilisation in China. In fact, the Needham papers at Cambridge, UK, includes well over three dozen letters and essays from Dr. Lo, on such varied topics as hydraulics, ship-building, navigation, and naval weaponry. Along the way, Dr. Lo published several seminal articles, including: “The Emergence of China as a Sea-Power during the late Sung and early Yuan Periods” (1955), “The Decline of the Early Ming Navy” (1958), “China’s Paddle-Wheel Boats; the Mechanised Craft Used in the Opium War and their Historical Background” (1960), and “Maritime Commerce and Its Relations to the Sung Navy” (1969). In 1957, he also completed a book-length manuscript combining much of his prior work on China’s navy entitled China as a Sea Power, 1127‒1368. Unfortunately, prior to his death by heart attack on 5 April 1981, Dr. Lo was never able to publish this manuscript, or a second book, entitled Empire Across the Western Ocean...