Xiaobing Li, "China’s Mahan: Admiral Liu Huaqing and the Rise of the Modern Chinese Navy (Naval Institute Press, 2026)

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**Nicholas Gordon** (1:26)
Hello, I'm Nicholas Gordon, host of the Asian Review of Books podcast done in partnership with the New Books Network. In this podcast, we interview fiction and non-fiction authors working in and around and about the Asia-Pacific region. In 2012, China debuted its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, a refurbished Soviet-era ship from Ukraine. The debut of the Liaoning was largely thanks to a long-time pressure campaign from Liu Huaqing, the one-time leader of the People's Liberation Army Navy and the man responsible for transforming China's naval strategy. China now has three carriers and is building a fourth. When Liu began his career, China saw its military victories coming primarily via land warfare. Liu, over decades, forced China to take naval combat seriously. Xiaobing Li writes about Liu's life in his book, China's Mahan, Admiral Liu Huaqing and the Rise of the Modern Chinese Navy. From his early career in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War and finishing with his long push to start China's aircraft carrier program.
Xiaobing Li is the Professor of History and Don Betz Endowed Chair in National Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma. He is also the author of The Dragon in the Jungle, Attack at Chosin, Building Ho's Army, History of Taiwan and The Cold War in East Asia. He is the Executive Editor of the Chinese Historical Review and he served in the PLA in China. So Xiaobing, thank you so much for coming on the show today to talk about your new biography of Liu Huaqing.
Why did you want to write a biography about Liu? And why is he important to how we understand China today?

**Xiaobing Li** (3:00)
Well, the reason for me to write this biography because of a strategic change of China today.
China changed his defense strategy from a ground warfare to a naval warfare, with emphasize on the naval development and modernization. Chinese Navy played an important role in his foreign policy and international status. So a better understanding of this designer or architect of the new Navy, as we know, Admiral Liu Huaqing, is more important than ever before.

**Nicholas Gordon** (3:47)
The book has the title, you know, China's Mahan.
And I know you resisted that moniker, but maybe to give people context, I mean, could you talk a bit about kind of these other figures that Liu Huaqing is often compared to, you know, Alfred Fehrmahan and Sergei Gorshkov. You know, why are these people often presented as, you know, comparisons to Liu?

**Xiaobing Li** (4:15)
Yeah. Well, the reason for me to use Mahan's name in the book title because of the influence or impact of Liu Huaqing.
Many Western strategists, including American naval officers, described Liu Huaqing as China's Mahan in the 1990s. Believe it was Liu who changed the Chinese Navy, played important role as Mahan did to the American Navy and to the international naval concept. So, but through my research, during my writing, I realized that the Russian animal or Soviet animal, Sergei Gorbachev, has more influence on Liu Huaqing than Mahan. Because Gorbachev's strategic theory, naval false-building conception had direct influence on Liu's formation of his idea during Liu Huaqing's study in the Soviet Union from 1952 to 1956