Troubled waters: China’s blue water PLA-N

It is reasonable to expect that China will employ these new military enhancements and increase her long distance naval manoeuvres in coming years, following the success of its Somali experience. Chinese ships popping up near the Straits of Malacca (within cooee of Club Med’s resort at Ria Bintan), in the Arabian Sea (off Mumbai) or even skirting Pearl Harbour, hopefully won’t catch Canberra, Jakarta, New Delhi and Washington napping.

But caught napping the United States Navy was in November 2007.

During a secret battle fleet exercise in the Pacific, the US Navy tasked over a dozen ships to provide the manoeuvres with a physical guard, while the technical brilliance of the world's sole military superpower supplied an invisible screen to detect and deter any intruders.

Or so the Americans thought.

American military chiefs were left speechless as an undetected Chinese submarine bobbed up at the heart of the exercise and near to the giant USS Kitty Hawk - a 320m aircraft carrier with nearly 4,500 personnel on board.

By the time it surfaced, a mere 9km away, the 50m long Song Class diesel electric attack submarine was well within range to launch torpedoes (whose range is 15km) and send 4,500 Americans to their watery mass graves.

Clearly, the Americans had no idea just how hard to detect and how silent China’s submarines were.

Reflecting on this incident, Commodore Stephen Saunders, editor of Jane's Fighting Ships, and a former Royal Navy anti-submarine specialist, said the US had paid relatively little attention to this form of warfare since the end of the Cold War.

Hopefully not any more.

And maritime incidents between China and the West will grow even more complex in the next few years.

Putting to one side China’s ongoing disputes with its eastern and southern neighbours over contested regions of the East China Sea and the South China Sea, home to vast undersea deposits of fossil fuels, a more sinister development could involve China sending its armed forces to physically secure natural resources in third countries - such as oil in Sudan or natural gas in Iran - when it deems them to be under threat from “Western imperialists”.

The new Yuzhao-class amphibious assault ship, which was on show at the naval parade on April 23 and whose job is to convey troops and helicopters abroad, would certainly play a key role in such an operation. While China was selling the building of such vessels for their defensive potential, it’s pretty clear few foreigners in attendance were buying.