Christopher Sharman, a researcher affiliated with the U.S. Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute, has published a new article in the IISS journal Survival (Vol. 68, Issue 3, June 2026) titled “China’s Far-Seas Navy and the Logic of Global Presence.” The article argues that the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is approaching a structural inflection point — from a force capable of sustaining a single continuous overseas deployment to one capable of simultaneous multi-theater presence.
The Single-NETF Model and Its Limits
Since December 2008, the PLAN has maintained a continuous Naval Escort Task Force (NETF) in the Gulf of Aden — a three-ship rotation that began as a counter-piracy mission under UN authorization. Over 43+ rotations, the mission has progressively expanded in scope: protecting Chinese overseas nationals (including the 2023 Sudan evacuation), conducting naval diplomacy, and demonstrating expeditionary competence. Sharman’s central question is whether one task force remains sufficient as China’s overseas interests — commercial, diplomatic, and strategic — continue to expand globally.
The Gulf of Guinea as a Template
The article focuses on the Gulf of Guinea as a case study and potential template for how the PRC establishes sustained naval access without a formal overseas base. Key fact patterns documented:
- The PLAN has conducted port visits, hospital-ship deployments, military exchanges, and security cooperation activities across West African littoral states for over a decade.
- The 43rd NETF conducted port calls to the Republic of Congo and Ghana, extending the Gulf of Aden rotation’s footprint into the Gulf of Guinea.
- China has developed or invested in port infrastructure across the region. The Africa Center for Strategic Studies has mapped at least 46 Chinese-linked port projects across Africa as of early 2025.
- Chinese academics affiliated with the Naval Command College have publicly identified the Gulf of Guinea as a priority region for enhanced economic and security ties under the Belt and Road Initiative.
- The 2025 DoD China Military Power Report documents PLAN global logistics and basing ambitions, consistent with Sharman’s thesis.
The Logic of Pre-Positioning
Sharman’s core analytical claim: China does not wait for a lease agreement or logistics accord before establishing a durable naval presence. The PLAN cultivates elite networks, public narratives, and operational habits — hospital ships, joint exercises, defense-industrial ties — that make a sustained presence appear both natural and beneficial to host nations long before any formal basing arrangement is signed. This mirrors the pattern used at Djibouti, where years of commercial port investment and diplomatic engagement preceded the 2017 establishment of China’s first overseas military base.
Strategic Implications
The Gulf of Guinea sits astride critical Atlantic sea lanes and is the source of significant Chinese energy imports — Angola ranked as China’s second-largest oil supplier as recently as 2018. Piracy in the region, tracked by the IMB’s 2025 map, provides a ready-made justification for PLAN engagement parallel to the Gulf of Aden precedent. French (Operation CORYMBE) and British naval presences in the region are thin; the security vacuum is real.
Sharman concludes that the Gulf of Guinea may offer a preview of how the PRC establishes strategic footholds globally — and what a truly multi-theater PLAN looks like in practice. The transition from a single-NETF model to simultaneous multi-theater deployments would represent a qualitative shift in China’s global military posture, with direct implications for U.S. and allied naval planning in the Atlantic.
The full article is available via Survival, Vol. 68, Issue 3 (2026), pp. 135–160.
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