Songdo

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lion yuan ($300 million) of national, and 300 million yuan ($44 million) of provincial funding was spent on this project. Over 30,000 scientists and technicians from more than 180 maritime related institutions nationwide worked on this project, sailing more than 500 survey vessels 2 million kilometers, over a total of 20,000 offshore operation days.17 Project 908 is a critical national project, which aims to collect and disseminate data about China’s littoral regions in order to improve the country’s ocean management capabilities. As stated in the General Principle of Special Project, there is a need for maritime development to shift from a traditional model focused just on shipping and navigation and fishing and salting, to a modern one emphasizing the scaling up of marine industrial development. A comprehensive survey and assessment of China’s maritime space is designed to support national policy making, economic development, and maritime management.18 Consistent with China’s rapid implementation of its ocean strategy and policies in the first decade of the 21st century, Project 908 was launched less than a year after publication of two national reports on the subject of ocean development. The report of the 16th National Party Congress published in November 2002 emphasized the importance of “implementing ocean development” in its section on economic construction and reform.19 Barely half a year later, in May 2003, the State Council issued the Outline of the National Ocean Economic Development Plan (the 2003 plan), the first of its kind since the founding of the PRC.20 Commenting on the 2002 report and 2003 plan, Zhiguo Gao, executive director of the China Institute for Marine Affairs, addressed the anticipated timescale for building China into a maritime power. As history shows, developing the ocean and becoming a strong ocean power can take many decades or even over 100 years. It took Russia 400 years to go from being a continental nation to a

13. Officially confirmed sea area for annual land reclamation since 2002 in China.

coastal one. The United States took fifty years to become a great ocean.… China’s ocean economic development before 1998 was in a stage of nurturing, between 1999 and 2015 is in a period of growing, between 2016 and 2033 will be in a period of flourishing, and after 2034 will be in a period of maturity.”21 Gao predicted China will be a strong Pacific sea power between 2010 and 2030, eventually becoming a strong global sea power between 2030 and 2050. If the founding of the PRC in the mid-20th century marked the end of a “Century of Humiliation” starting with the outbreak of the first Opium War in the mid-19th century, then the beginning of the 21st century can be seen as a fortuitous time for embarking on a new oceanic future. A future which glamorizes the ocean as “the hope of the 21st century” and the 21st century as “an ocean century.” Making China a strong global sea power by the mid-21st century, the 200th Anniversary of the outbreak of the First Opium War, has become an important political project since the fourth generation of Chinese leadership came to power at the 16th Party Congress in 2002. Chinese government official and academic terminology often refers to the country’s ocean area as “blue national territory,” while the marine economy is called the “blue economy.” Protecting its economic interests and access to resources is an overriding motivation for China to develop its sea power. In the preface of the 2003 plan, the State Council writes, “The ocean contains rich biological, hydrocarbon, and mineral resources; developing the marine economy has important significance in terms of promoting the rational distribution and industrial restructuring of the coastal area economy, and in terms of maintaining China’s sustained, healthy, and rapid economic development.” Portraying the ocean as a “cache of rich resources,” the beginning of the 2003 plan states: “China is a great ocean nation (海洋大國), the ocean area under its jurisdiction is vast, and the potential for the development and use of resources is great. Accelerating the development of the marine industry and promoting the development of the marine economy have important meaning for the formation of a new point of economic growth for the people and for realizing the goal of fully building a moderately prosperous society.”22 To better evaluate and quantify China’s “blue economy” plans , the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) launched the Marine Economy Accounting System (海洋經濟統計核算) and created a new developmental measure called “Gross Ocean Product” (GOP). GOP is regarded as the basis for achieving rational development and efficient management of the marine economy; it is a monetary measure consistent with and comparable with Gross Domestic Product (GDP). To implement its GOP accounting, the National Standard Management Committee (NSMC) issued the