Expanding the dragon’s reach: the rise of China’s anti-access naval doctrine and forces

Among the multiple dimensions of the tous azimuths modernisation of Chinese naval forces, the development of China’s anti-access capacity has recently elicited considerable interest. The important link between this capacity and an overarching vision of the use of force–i.e. a naval doctrine–has, however, often been left implicit. This article shows that the particular development of China’s naval anti-access forces–more precisely, forces with an impact on the naval balance–can be explained by a shift of China’s naval doctrine towards a distinctly pre-emptive posture, which, itself, stems from the set of constraints imposed by the framework of ‘local war under informationised conditions’.