Abstract

China’s military power has been the attention of world community since China proposed to reduce the military arm force to 700,000 troops and concentrated in strategically enhancing and modernizing the navy and air force on 30 September 2009. This is because China’s geo-political landscape with regionally countries is majorly connected by sea, whereby China is the power that dominates the South China Sea shared with various countries in Asia-Pacific. This demonstrates that the military power hegemony of China is largely influential, not only at a regional level but also at an international level. Nevertheless, China’s emergence as a military superpower was not achieved effortlessly. The emergence of Asia’s Red Giant went through various stages of development based on different leadership. China’s success story in becoming one of the world superpower and military power went through various phases of government. In general, China’s appearance as a military superpower involved three major phases namely the era of Mao Zedong (1949-1978), Deng Xiaoping (1978-1997) and post Deng (1997-2009). Therefore, this article will focus on explaining China’s attempt in developing policy and military according to the leadership phases.