China’s 1974 naval expedition to the Paracel Islands BRUCE A . ELLEMAN

China’s 1974 naval expedition to claim the Paracel Islands has received relatively little scholarly attention by Western naval historians, perhaps because it is considered to be a purely bilateral dispute between China and Vietnam.2 Yet this almost 40-year-old territorial conflict continues to fester, with the Vietnamese government regularly disputing China’s ownership to the islands. More interesting still, China’s 1974 maritime expedition represents a singular case of a land power resorting to naval instruments of coercion typically used only by sea powers. This was arguably the first time that the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) conducted naval expeditionary operations against a foreign enemy.3