But perhaps the ultimate truth of the amazing decision to ban entirely overseas Naval adventures may be found in the words of the young Ming Emperor Zhu Zhanji, who presided over many of Zheng’s momentous journeys.
“I do not,” he once said, “care for foreign things.”
He was not of course referring to sweet crude oil from the vast fields of Kazakhstan. And now, fast-forward in the long winter of 2007, Admiral Zhang Yushu could not afford to ignore foreign things. And he was about to reverse almost 580 years of Chinese Naval policy: policy from which that huge nation had not departed. Not until World War I were the giant battle fleets of the Ming Emperors matched, either in size or relative firepower, by any of the world’s great powers.
Zhang Yushu stared through the windshield of the Navy car, watching them cast off the lines of the 1,700-ton guided-missile frigate Shantou, a warship that would have been dwarfed by Zheng He’s Pure Harmony.
“She’s going, Jicai. And it’s a historic moment in the long records of our sea power…. Just think of it…that little Type 053 Jianghu frigate is steaming off in the wake of our ancestors of five hundred years ago. The same old sea-lanes, from the most glorious days of our history…just like the Silk Road. They’re going back as the main power in the Persian Gulf, in a sense to conquer the trading world all over again.”
“I’m not sure the Americans would be appeciative of your phrasing, Yushu. They think they have rights to the gulf and its waters anytime they see fit.”
“Ah, yes. So they might. But remember we were there as welcome guests and trading partners with the Arabs half a millennium ago, and longer. Remember, too, in recent years Chinese porcelain from the Ming Dynasty has been discovered along the shores of Hormuz. We have long historic roots in that area, and the Persians want us back to help them in the struggle against the West…. Oh yes, Jicai. We belong in those ancient waters of our forefathers.”
“And we’re taking a lot of high explosives to prove it. Eh, Yushu?”
Shantou eased out into the main channel, the driving rain gleaming on her big surface-to-surface guided-missile launchers. Her six twin 37-millimeter gun houses stood stark against the shore lights. Her five-tubed fixed antisubmarine mortar launchers could still be seen through the rain squalls.
What could not be seen, however, were the principal weapons of her forthcoming voyage, the 60 Russian made sea mines, secluded under heavy tarpaulin from the prying eye of the American satellite that had passed overhead two hours previously.
Out on the pitch-black horizon, there waited Shantou’s two Shanghai-built sister ships, Kangding and Zigong. They were in company with the first of China’s new $400 million Russian destroyers, the 8,000-ton, 500-foot-long Sovremenny Class, Hangzhou, with its supersonic guided missile, the Raduga SS-N-22 Sunburn.
But the Hangzhou was not there to engage in surface-to-surface warfare. Her mission was strictly clandestine. She would lead her three frigates on the 6,000-mile journey to Hormuz, essentially to carry 40 more mines, but also because in the event of a confrontation she was best equipped to fight the little fleet out of trouble — though she would be no match for a determined U.S. commanding officer in a big cruiser.
Their voyage would take them down the South China Sea, up through the Malacca Strait into the Bay of Bengal, where they would immediately rendezvous with the 37,000-ton Chinese tanker Nancang, operating out of their new Navy base on Haing Gyi Island, at the mouth of Burma’s Bassein River, across the wide, flat, rice-growing delta, west of Rangoon.
Haing Gyi Island had occupied many a sleepless night for the American President’s National Security Adviser, Admiral Morgan, who was suspicious of Chinese motives at the best of times. The creation of a big Chinese fueling base, and Naval dockyard in Burmese national home waters, sent a shiver right through him. Particularly since the Chinese had constructed a railroad from Kunming, the 2,000-year-old capital of Yunnan Province, straight across the Burmese border to the railhead city of Lashio, from where heavy military hardware could easily join the rest of the $1.4 billion worth of weaponry China had already shipped into Burma.
Back on the rainswept dock at Zhanjiang, Admiral Zhang pulled his greatcoat around him and stepped out to watch the Shantou heading out toward the black shape of the harbor wall, and beyond to the South China Sea.
“Don’t you get a thrill from this, Jicai? Just seeing our great modern Blue Water Navy moving into action on this dark night, bound for a major foreign adventure, the first for more than five hundred years?”
“I suppose so, Yushu. I’ll let you know more when we discover how seriously infuriated the Americans are by the exercise.”
But even the wise and experienced Jicai looked quizzical at the non sequitur that served as a reply from his lifelong friend.
“A mere diversion, my Jicai. The merest diversion.”
“Now where the hell are they going?” demanded Admiral Morgan, staring at the grainy, poor-quality satellite photographs taken through the rain clouds above the Chinese coast. “Looks like three frigates and a Sovremenny destroyer, going south. What the hell for? And how far? And who the hell’s going to refuel ’em? Answer that.”
“I’m afraid I’m not really qualified to do that,” said Kathy O’Brien sweetly.
“Well…er…you ought to be. Ought to be general knowledge for anyone in Washington….”
“Oh…I hadn’t realized.”
“How far do you think they’re going, then?”
“How could I possibly know?”
“I know you don’t know. I’m just asking for guidance. Is that too much?”
“Well for all I know, they’re just going on a picnic,” she replied.
“Well, I wouldn’t care about that…nice basket of chop suey in the pouring rain on the South China Sea. But that may not be what’s happening. What I’m interested in is whether they are going on a long voyage, maybe to visit their friends in Iran. And if they are, those frigates are gonna get refueled from that damned new base of theirs on that frigging Burmese island.”
“Which Burmese island?”
“Haing Gyi Island, their first serious Navy base of operations outside of China — EVER,” the Admiral thundered. “Right now we’re returning to the goddamned fifteenth century, when their fleets dominated the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf.
“And another thing,” he yelled. “What the hell happened to all those sea mines from Russia…the ones we saw getting unloaded at Zhanjiang? Where the hell are they? And why isn’t anyone keeping me up to speed on this? Where the hell’s George Morris?”
“As you well know, my darling, he has cancer of his right lung.”
“Serves him right for smoking so much,” grunted the Admiral, puffing away on his cigar. “Where is he right now?”
“He’s undergoing intensive chemotherapy, as you also well know. Since that awful treatment has been making him extremely ill, I imagine he’s asleep.”
“Well, have someone wake him up.”
“Honey, please,” said the best-looking redhead in Washington with a sigh.
Lieutenant Ramshawe was sifting methodically through a pile of satellite photographs. He had singled out a dozen shots, and he was trying to fit them together into a montage, trying to see if the three submarines were actually forming some kind of a small convoy, out there in the Arabian Sea.