Research for Chinese

The Commander, U.S. Seventh Fleet, asked CNA to assess the security environment of the Asia-Pacific Region between now and 2010. This memorandum identifies the most probable evolutionary trends for the Indian Ocean Region, with particular emphasis on the largest factor, India. Research team members conducted interviews with officials, officers, and scholars in Washington, New Delhi, and Islamabad, and in Hawaii with CINCPAC staff members, and East-West Center and other University of Hawaii scholars. The project team also drew heavily on expert opinion available in Washington, at the Departments of State and Defense, at the National Defense University and from the intelligence and scholarly communities.

This research memorandum is part of a study sponsored by the Commander, Seventh Fleet, to assess the security environment of the Asia-Pacific Region (APR) between now and 2010. It focuses on the most probable evolutionary trends for China during this period. China's emergence as a major regional power will be one of the principal factors affecting the security, politics, and economies of Asia and the Pacific between now and 2010. The forces shaping China's emergence are primarily internal, but include such important external factors as Beijing s perceptions of the intentions of its neighbors and of the United States. Much of the uncertainty about China's future course and impact on the region center on whether, and how, China accepts the norms of the international systems that have grown since World War II - norms that have not yet been tested by the rapid rise in national power of a large non-Western country. Alternative scenarios emerging from the rapid changes underway in China could have widely varying implications for this and other issues.

This paper discusses the Shanghai incident of 1932 and how it marked the end of a form of naval activity, the protection and promotion of trade in peacetime, that had predominated in the Far East.