ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that the strategic guidelines adopted in the 1980s had predominantly limited the agenda of setting maritime security since the central government intended to keep a low profile in national security. It illustrates that China's naval capability during a period was unable to support regular navigation in the near sea, and therefore Liu's proposed strategy became a long-term vision rather than an actual policy. Deng Xiaoping's era was a period of recovery from the Cultural Revolution. During Deng Xiaoping's era, because security threats were relatively minor, ''active defense'' usually referred to positional or small-scale mobile warfare. Overall, the policy discussion of maritime security, one of the fundamental developments of China's maritime security strategy during the 1980s, was the proposal of Liu Huaqing's near sea active defense strategy, which built a foundation for the Chinese Mahanianism. However, naval capability building was mostly halted during Deng Xiaoping's era.
