According to some Chinese media reports, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on June 12 visited the Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology in Qingdao, China, calling for a “strong maritime nation” to be built.
He then traveled by boat to Weihai’s Liugong Island (劉公島), where the Qing Dynasty’s Beiyang Fleet was formed before the island was occupied by British and Japanese troops for years.
While visiting the ruins of the fleet’s base and the Museum of the Sino-Japanese War, Xi said he had always wanted to go there and to learn from the island’s history.
He also said that China should be on the alert at all times, and the more than 1.3 billion Chinese should learn from history and strive to become stronger.
Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative and Chinese expansion in the East and South China seas have exposed Xi’s ambition to build a strong maritime state. This makes one wonder if his sudden visit to the site where the Beiyang Fleet was destroyed was an attempt to stir up hatred between China and Japan.
It was not long before the questions about Xi’s visit were answered.
On June 16, the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Supervisory Commission announced on their Web site that Sun Bo (孫波), general manager of China Shipbuilding Industry Corp, which is responsible for building China’s homemade aircraft carriers, was under investigation for suspected serious contraventions of party disciplinary rules and the law.
The state-run company is the main force behind the research and development of advanced Chinese naval armaments, from aircraft carriers to nuclear submarines, including the Liaoning and China’s first homemade aircraft carrier.
That such a key figure is involved in corruption means that his company has been cutting corners when developing and building aircraft carriers, implying that the vessels might be weaker than they look.
Learning from the West’s strong ships and powerful artillery, the Qing Dynasty built four modern naval fleets during its Westernization movement. The Beiyang Fleet received the most investment and was the largest of the four. It was once the world’s eighth and Asia’s largest fleet.
Formed in 1888, it was almost completely destroyed by the Japanese Navy in the First Sino-Japanese War just six years later.
There are arguments about why the fleet was destroyed, but what is certain is that the empire’s officialdom was extremely corrupt as most officials greedily sought wealth, while military morale was low and naval armaments were incomplete or damaged.
How could the Qing empire compete with a Japan that was leaving Asia behind and was aiming to join Europe during the Meiji Restoration?
Although well more than 100 top military officers have been arrested in Xi’s anti-corruption campaign, the leadership of the company responsible for building a strong navy continued to engage in corruption.
Even more consternating, Liu Changhong (劉長虹), the company’s head of ethics appointed by the central commission, was dismissed from his post and expelled from the party for taking bribes last year, implying that there is more than meets the eye in this case.
Given these circumstances, how can the company’s products be reliable?
Once the Chinese aircraft carriers and warships see battle, will they repeat the embarrassment of the Beiyang Fleet and be wiped out entirely by the experienced US Navy?
Paul Lin is a political commentator.
Translated by Eddy Chang
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her
Before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) can blockade, invade, and destroy the democracy on Taiwan, the CCP seeks to make the world an accomplice to Taiwan’s subjugation by harassing any government that confers any degree of marginal recognition, or defies the CCP’s “One China Principle” diktat that there is no free nation of Taiwan. For United States President Donald Trump’s upcoming May 14, 2026 visit to China, the CCP’s top wish has nothing to do with Trump’s ongoing dismantling of the CCP’s Axis of Evil. The CCP’s first demand is for Trump to cease US
RSS