As the Maldives announced its Free Trade Agreement with China last week, alarm bells rang around the world. But while most spoke of the impact this would have on the future, it is interesting to glance at the historical importance of the move.
In 1405, China’s most famous sea warrior-diplomat, Admiral Zheng He, set sail on seven ocean voyages. With 300 ships and around 28,000 men, Admiral Zheng’s flotillas were an awe-inspiring sight as they travelled from Vietnam to Mecca to Africa, stopping in countries in the Indian Ocean such as India along the way. Admiral Zheng’s ostensible purpose was to carry gifts and goods for trade to each of the ports he reached. He took Chinese silk, porcelain and lacquered goods and brought back spices, pearls, and rare woods. But in later expeditions, he extended the Ming dynasty’s desire for suzerainty to his agenda, often using muscle power when diplomacy didn’t work. For instance, Vira Alakesvara, the ruler of Sri Lanka, refused to recognise the Ming Emperor Yongle and was taken to China as a prisoner.
The story of Admiral Zheng and his “treasure voyages” is used both by China and its rivals for instruction. For China, Admiral Zheng’s voyages far and wide, even before the voyages of renowned explorers like Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus, is a symbol of Chinese prowess and explains its interest in using maritime expeditions for trade. For others, the voyages were a lesson in the Chinese use of power to attain its means, and hegemonic maritime ambitions.
As a result, when China celebrated the 600th anniversary of Admiral Zheng’s voyages in 2005, the U.S. began to worry about how far China would go with its naval ambitions. In 2005, when Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld asked consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton for a paper on “Energy Futures in Asia”, an internal report said that there was more to China’s naval forays than just trade and energy ties. The report used the term “string of pearls” for the first time to describe China’s projects in Gwadar, Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand. China’s goal, it said, was to build “a blue-water navy to control the sea lanes, but also to develop undersea mines and missile capabilities to deter the potential disruption of its energy supplies from potential threats.”
Twelve years after that paper came out, China’s ambitions and its achievements in East Asia, the Indian Ocean Region and beyond are much more visible. “String of pearls” is a byword in the region. Like the treasure voyages, the Chinese government has set out to win the world with three different sorts of maritime manoeuvres: the Belt and Road Initiative that includes the Maritime Silk Route, trade routes, and a string of naval bases and port projects from Djibouti, to Gwadar to Hambantota to the man-made islands of the South China Sea. While China insists its motives are benign, the question remains: Is China’s rise peaceful or does the silken glove cover an iron fist, as Admiral Zheng’s did?
