The U.S. Navy has taken some heat recently for focusing too heavily on the Middle East and neglecting the Asia-Pacific. The same cannot be said of the U.S. Marine Corps, which unveiled a new strategy in 2019 relying on dispersed groups of Marines to wield drones and anti-ship missiles in archipelagic warfare in order to unhinge Chinese maritime expansion. As the Marines are developing new capabilities at the pointy end of the American spear, so to speak, it’s not surprising that USMC strategy is attracting lots of attention from Chinese defense experts. This article summarizes several recent Chinese-language assessments.
The close attention that Beijing is paying to the new USMC strategy became clear about a year ago when the Global Times [环球时报] published an unusual editorial decrying Washington’s new determination to deploy anti-ship missiles proximate to China. Arguing that the new American strategy aims to correct a U.S. Navy prioritization for “open ocean control” rather than “close-quarters engagement in confined waters,” this article concludes that Washington’s effort to “control maritime chokepoints [aims to] curtail the freedom of rivals to operate at sea … [and] introduces new risks … .”
A much more detailed study of the new USMC strategy appeared in early 2025 in the naval magazine Modern Ships [现代舰船]. This Chinese assessment noted with considerable alarm that the USMC was experimenting with unmanned surface vessels capable of firing the stealthy LRASM anti-ship cruise missile and that these units could alternatively serve as forward scouts, fixing targets for long-range U.S. military fires. Still, this analysis underlines some weaknesses of the USMC strategy, including the range limitations of related sensors and drones, and even characterized the air-defense capabilities of the USMC as “precarious.” Another study in this same magazine had earlier drawn attention to the logistics quandaries raised by the new strategy.
A 2026 Chinese analysis in another Chinese navy-affiliated magazine, Shipborne Weapons [舰载武器], offers a sharper critique of the Marines’ new approach, noting that the creation of the Marine Littoral Regiments (MLR) “actually represents campaign preparation by the USMC to militarily intervene in China’s unification.” At the outset, this study notes that many American think tanks raised doubts about the strategy, suggesting that forward bases without sea and air control could prove “untenable.”
There is a recognition in this analysis that the new mobile missile launchers that are being deployed by the USMC are small, light, and thus “not easily discovered by … surveillance.” In the end, this study concludes that the USMC strategy is vulnerable because the “U.S has no way to quickly establish air superiority. This could take weeks or months and would entail massive losses.”
Among the most remarkable pieces written by Chinese experts on the new USMC direction is one that was published in translation recently by the China institute at U.S. Naval War College (NWC). That translation deserves extra attention due to the fact that it was written by senior active-duty Chinese Navy officers and also because it was published originally in a sensitive internal circulation Chinese military journal too.
Though this piece does not touch directly on the sensitive Taiwan issue, and it also explicitly notes the USMC strategy aims at deterrence of Beijing, it nevertheless explains that the new USMC deployments amount to “continuous penetration and encroachment into our near seas” and argues that China must “establish effective countermeasures.” Notably, this high-level rendering links the USMC strategy to China’s improving submarine force in significant detail, observing that forward deployed Marine forces could deploy “hydro-acoustic arrays and other assets to establish barrier zones and monitoring areas to track Chinese submarine operations.” Similar arguments are made that U.S. deployments could degrade Chinese air defenses by employing drone swarms “to overwhelm our radar tracking capacity.”
The Chinese Navy authors caution against applying resource-intensive assets to defeat such American asymmetric tactics. However, the conclusion of the article is rather disturbing since it argues that China must counter this posture by deploying a Chinese “proactive offensive posture, aggressively expand[ing] our operational reach, [and] project[ing] forces forward.” Elaborating, they counsel: “We must maintain and normalize forward-deployed forces, extend[ing] undersea combat capabilities as far forward as feasible.”
This conclusion and other aspects of these Chinese-language analyses raise some rather uncomfortable questions for U.S. defense planners. The final translation done by NWC strongly hints that the Chinese Navy may be adopting a more aggressive approach as a direct reaction to the forward lean in American strategy. This seems to be a very clear manifestation of the so-called ‘security dilemma,’ wherein two powers’ defensive measures develop into a dangerous escalatory spiral. Moreover, there is a clear recognition by Chinese strategists that forward USMC elements could be vulnerable due to logistics challenges and lack of proper air and missile defenses. It would not be the first time that the USMC was deployed haphazardly in East Asia at the cost of many American lives.
Understanding these dynamics, American leaders should recalibrate and opt to rely less on forward defense. Alternatively, the USMC should aim to embrace the strategic depth of the Pacific and its myriad island archipelagos (e.g. the Philippines) in a less costly, less risky, more sustainable, and clearly defensive strategy.
Lyle Goldstein is director of the China Initiative at Brown University’s Watson School and concurrently serves as director of the Asia Program at the think-tank Defense Priorities.
