China’s Far-seas Navy and the Logic of Global Presence

Since 2008, China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has maintained a continuous presence in the Gulf of Aden, transforming a counter-piracy mission into a flexible instrument of global statecraft. This article contends that China is approaching a point at which it must sustain multiple simultaneous overseas deployments to protect its expanding national interests. Focusing on the Gulf of Guinea, it examines how China is using naval diplomacy, humanitarian missions, joint exercises and defence-industrial ties to shape the political and operational environment in ways that enable a sustained PLAN presence without reliance on a formal overseas base. The Gulf of Guinea thus provides a potential template for how China could establish sustained naval access in other regions.