expeditions. His voyages spanned over a quarter-century and ranged far beyond
China’s shores. Equipped with technology that was state-of-the-art for its day,
Zheng’s massive treasure ships sailed throughout the Southeast and South Asian
seas and may have even reached the eastern coast of Africa. To this day, the top
Chinese leadership invokes Zheng He’s benevolent voyages as evidence of
China’s ‘‘peaceful rise.’’^4 In contrast, the crushing defeats meted out by the
French (1884–85) and the Japanese (1894–95) against the Qing Dynasty’s navy
form an integral part of the so-called ‘‘century of humiliation’’ narrative that
continues to animate Chinese nationalism.
Commerce
The most dynamic and some of the most powerful economies on the globe
are concentrated in Northeast and Southeast Asia. The Japanese archipelago is
home to the second largest economy in the world. South Korea, Taiwan, and
Singapore remain important high-technology and manufacturing hubs of the
global economy. China, the most impressive performer of the past decade,
is looked upon as the prospective economic juggernaut of the twenty-first
century. South Asia’s economic prospects are bright as well. India’s prowess
in information technology is the envy of the world, and there is hope that Indian
economic growth will yield spillover effects, aiding productivity beyond the
subcontinent.
Statistics on the volume of seaborne of trade in Asia furnish one indicator of
the close relationship between commerce and oceanic activity. Consider the case
of China. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Develop-
ment (UNCTAD),
China is by far the world’s largest exporter of containerized cargo, with 14.4 million
TEUs in 2003. This is expected to grow further to 18.6 million TEUs in 2005, assuming
an annual growth rate of almost 18 per cent, which is also the region’s highest. China will
then account for 24 per cent of the world’s containerized exports.^5Asia’s seaborne trade, as measured in tonnage, is equally impressive. In 1990,
total goods loaded in the region weighed in at 585 million tons. Fifteen
years later, the figures jumped to 1.6 billion tons, an astounding 280 percent
increase.^6
Shipbuilding capacity is another important indicator. Clustered in Northeast
Asia, South Korea, Japan, and China are the three largest shipbuilders in the
world. The reality is that the only cost-effective way to move goods in bulk is
seaborne transport. As the volume of trade increases, consequently, the demand
for shipbuilding will grow proportionately. China appears poised to meet that
demand. Foreign observers predict thatChina will become the world’s largest
shipbuilder by 2015, surpassing Japan and South Korea.^7 In anticipation of this,
Introduction 3