ABSTRACT
After a decade of minimal maritime security strategy, maritime security gradually became a political agenda in Beijing during Jiang Zemin's era in the 1990s. This chapter examines the development of China's maritime security strategy in the 1990s by dividing the chapter into six parts. It suggests that, while the central government decided to have more input in military modernization, it preferred to avoid confrontation to a large extent. The chapter illustrates that, as the inheritors of Liu Huaqing's legacy, the Chinese Navy continued to develop its approach to maritime security strategy. As the State Council stated in the Nineth FYP in 1996, "Military modernization is the basic guarantee of national security and economic development". However, its rationale emphasized the relationship between the marine economy and maritime security in order to align with the strategic guideline of military modernization as the basic guarantee of economic development.
