The aircraft carrier champion and naval genius behind China’s blue sea strategy

The commissioning of the Fujian, China’s third and most advanced aircraft carrier, will mark yet another milestone in the country’s naval ambition.

Behind this gigantic symbol of China’s maritime power lies the vision of one man: Admiral Liu Huaqing, who famously said that he would not die peacefully until his country had an aircraft carrier.

The former commander of the Chinese navy was also a revered strategist and a visionary technocrat who directed the comprehensive modernisation of China’s naval forces to world-class standards.

During Liu’s long and distinguished career, many international commentators compared him to Alfred Thayer Mahan, the US historian and naval officer widely considered to be the most important American strategist of the 19th century.

The road to the sea

Born in 1916 in the rural heartland of Hubei province in central China, Liu joined the Red Army at 13 and took part in the Long March as a teenage soldier of the People’s Liberation Army. Over the more than two decades of the Sino-Japanese war and Chinese civil war, he rose to the senior ranks of the PLA.

He was still relatively young when he was transferred to the newly established PLA Navy in 1952. It was the first time he had ever seen the sea.

South China Morning Post