ABSTRACT
For all that the PLA Navy's dependence on Soviet training, equipment, doctrine and experience was a critical factor in shaping its early development, instinctive Chinese wariness of the dangers of relying too heavily on foreign sources of technology and ideas ensured that the Soviet model was not adopted without a critical appraisal of its suitability for local Chinese conditions. Mao himself worried about historic Russian efforts to dominate China and inveighed against the blind acceptance of all things Soviet to the detriment of the nation's sovereignty (Lewis and Xue 1994: 3). Indeed, as Kondapalli (2001: 173) notes, by the late 1950s reaction to the wholesale adoption of Soviet techniques and models of development had emerged in the form of criticism of ‘doctrinairism and formalism’ in naval work. Peng Dehuai, who sought to copy the Soviet model of naval development ‘uncritically’, was forced to admit his error: ‘While learning from the experience of other countries in creating a modernized army, unsuitable training and working methods were adopted without giving sufficient consideration to actual conditions’ (ibid.: 174). Lewis and Xue (1994: 220) argue that the Chinese High Command adopted a doctrine of coastal defence more because of its inherent suitability for the PRC's geopolitical and economic circumstances at the time rather than because it came recommended by Moscow: ‘that coastal defense echoed early Soviet naval thinking was a coincidence, an extra bonus, not a conscious choice’. While the senior military leaders who laid the foundations of the PLA Navy acknowledged the relevance of the Soviet experience, Lewis and Xue (ibid.) maintain that ‘they consciously sought a principle grounded in China's actual circumstances’.
