China’s military and political leaders have also studied Alfred Thayer Mahan’s classic work on the relationship between sea power and national greatness and cite it frequently, along with historical examples of British and American naval power during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this view, sea power has an axiomatic relationship with global great power status, including the power that subjugated imperial China during the Century of Humiliation. They, therefore, see this as an important strategic lesson for China in the twenty-first century. As a result, China has concluded that
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