| Summary/Abstract |
China has a long coastline of approximately 18,000 kilometers and hence an
extensive continental shelf as well as an EEZ. Its coastline is said to be the tenth
longest coastline in the world. The total sea area in the China Seas is about 4.7
million square kilometers. Despite these advantageous circumstances in geography,
China failed to become a maritime power like Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and
the UK. So it remained a land power for a long time except when Zheng He, the
great seafarer in Chinese history, led the greatest ocean-going fleets of the world of
that time, sailing to the Pacific and Indian Oceans during the years of 1405–1433.
As a result, China suffered foreign invasions several times from the sea, being
defeated in the Opium War as well as at the Sino–Japanese War in the nineteenth
century
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