Taiwan as Center of First Island Chain, per Chinese

choi

茶馆 is column name in the China section of The Economist magazine.

Chaguan A Chained Dragon; China’s maritime expansion reflects a curious mix of ambition and paranoia about being contained. The Economist, July 6, 2019.
https://www.economist.com/china/ ... bition-and-paranoia

Quotations after the first second paragraphs:

"China was an inward-looking, continental power when Mr Wu was born (in 1981]. It rose in part by turning to the sea. Seven of worlds ten largest container parts are in China.

"Unusually in its long history, China faces no serious threat of invasion by land [One may say this only when considering Mongolians, Tibetans, Manchurians and Russians as Chinese]. Against that, its national wealth is [note the present tense] concentrated in the region near the sea, as never before [I'd say since 东晋]. * * * Unsurprisingly, China is striving to become a maritime great power. Its navy, now the largest in Asia, is tasked with defending that all that coastal wealth, but also with protecting shipping lanes that carry 85% of the country's trade in goods by volume, as well as vital energy imports.

"Not so many years ago China called America imperialist for operating foreign military bases. In 2017 China opened an overseas naval base of its own, in the African country of Djibouti.

"Many ordinary Chinese insist that China's only fault is to grow large enough to freighten the West. 'We're not and, in our history, have never been an aggressive country,' says Mr Wu in Tianjin, loyally, though he is sure that Chin will defend itself if attacked.  Hawkish Americans scoff at such assurances, which they often hear from Chinese leaders. They point to such acts as China's construction of airbases and missile batteries on disputed reef in the South China Sea and see aggtresion and swaggering confidence.

"Chinese strategists urge Westerners to understand that their country's maritime rise is also guided by deep insecurity. They call China not so much blessed by geography, as cursed. They have a point. In 'Red Star over the Pacific [1st ed 2010; 2nd ed 2018],' an influential book on China's maritime ambition. Toshi Yoshihara [no Japanese name; unclear whether he was born in Japan or US; PhD, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts Univ] and James Holmes, two naval scholars, note that president Dwight Eisenhower saw the first island chain as a means for America and allies to hem China in, a view shared by Chinese admirals. The book quotes a Chinese military strategist who calls Taiwan, at the chain's centre, 'a lock around the neck of a great dragon.' It describes the claustrophobia of Chinese planners when they contemplate paths to the ocean that runs run through narrow choke-points between South Korea, Japan, Tawan, the Philippines, or through the Strait of Malacca  near Singapore.

"America's geography is even luckier below the waves, argues Owen Cote [associate director of MIT's Security Studies Program] of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a new study in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Since the Cold War, he writes, America has successfully tracked foreign submarines with acoustic arrays placed where continental shelves end and deep oceans begin. Asian allies host American arrays to detect Chinese submarines heading to the ocean past Japan, Taiwan or the Philippines. Geographical constraints -- such as the shallowness of Chinese inner seas -- make it hard for China to build similar arrays.   

Note:
(a) Owen R Cote, Invisible Nuclear-Armed Submarines, or Transparent Oceans? Are Ballistic Missile Submarines Still the Best Deterrent for the United States? Jan 2, 2019
https://thebulletin.org/2019/01/ ... -the-united-states/
(abstract only)
is locked behind paywall.
(b)
(i) The en.wiktionary.org for"first island chain" says of its etymology: "calque of Chinese 第一岛链."
(ii) Christopher P Cavas, Powers Jockey for Pacific Island Chain Influence. Defense News, Feb 1, 2016
https://www.defensenews.com/glob ... nd-chain-influence/
(" 'It's truly a case of where you stand. Perspective is shaped by one's geographic and geostrategic position,' said Andrew Erickson, a professor with the China Maritime Studies Institute at the Naval War College.  'Barriers is a very Chinese perspective,' said Erickson. 'It reflects a concern that foreign military facilities based on the islands may impede or threaten China's efforts or influence.' [This article did not say what US view the chain, if not a barrier]* * * Erickson, in a new paper co-authored with Joel Wuthnow of the National Defense University and published in The China Quarterly, carried out a comprehensive, five-year examination of Chinese literature to determine how mainland China views the chains. He reported that the idea originated in the west during the Cold War – Chinese sources often credit 1950s US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles as the concept's progenitor. * * * 'In many ways Japan is as central to island chain thinking as one can get,' Erickson said. 'Japan constitutes the largest portion of the first and second chains as any other nation' * * * Taiwan, unsurprisingly, often stands out in the attention it receives in Chinese writings.  'Many Chinese sources emphasize their view of Taiwan's status as a key node on the first island chain,' Erickson said")

A civilian, Dulles is said to coin island chain in 1951. He would become secretary of states 1953-1959 (Eisenhower presidency 1953-1961).