... add in the German “High Seas Fleet” of WW1.
A truly successful Navy needs fleet bases with easy access to the open ocean. The Germans & Soviets never had that. They were potentially (and actually) bottled up.
China has easier, but by no means easy, access to open water. Taiwan & Japan pretty much cut them off in the North, so they are focusing efforts around Hainan in the South.
The High Seas Fleet was another example of quantitative inferiority.
The Germans had better ships than the Grand Fleet, but not enough of ‘em. The Grand Fleet had a decisive advantage in numbers and weight of fire. Jellicoe almost had ‘em at Jutland, but Beatty let him down. The Germans kept trying to pull the Grand Fleet into a submarine or destroyer ambush to even the odds, but never quite succeeded.
The High Seas Fleet was another example of quantitative inferiority.
The Germans had better ships than the Grand Fleet, but not enough of ‘em. The Grand Fleet had a decisive advantage in numbers and weight of fire. Jellicoe almost had ‘em at Jutland, but Beatty let him down. The Germans kept trying to pull the Grand Fleet into a submarine or destroyer ambush to even the odds, but never quite succeeded.