From France, Germany, to the Soviet Union, traditional land powers failed to convert into sea powers—not because they didn't want to, but because they were under constant pressure from nearby sea powers. When so-called experts believe this is deserved, we can instead observe the emergence of something that breaks with tradition.
I disagree.
In reality, the big issue for continental powers was trying to create a powerful navy first, without having extensive and open trade across the sea. The German, French, and Soviet cases essentially fall within this context. While France and Germany tried to compete with the Royal Navy, the British already had dominance of the sea through maritime trade, which was not the case for France and Germany.
The Soviet case is even worse; they didn't even have a competitive edge against the rapidly growing Asian maritime market, such as Japan and South Korea during the Cold War, especially with the container revolution that Sarah Paine herself mentioned in this video.
The issue here is that Sarah Paine believes China is doomed because it is a continental power and subject to the disadvantages of being a continental power. However, all or almost all the characteristics described in the video show that China is closer to being a maritime power than the continental power Sarah Paine claims.
For example, in the video she states that the decision to remain a continental power stems from China having the Silk Road through Central Asia, highlighting the consistency of land-based communication projects and lines, forgetting the fact that China has its own Maritime Silk Road, while the land route is an alternative to the maritime route. She believes China is preferentially focusing on the land route, highlighting the disadvantage of China still being and continuing to be a continental power.
Furthermore, the container revolution itself, ironically, is the answer to China's own argument. Many cite the advantage of geography as a strength of the US, mainly mentioning the Mississippi Canal. However, unlike China, whose large canals pass through urban agglomerations and metropolises with hundreds of millions of inhabitants via river waterways, allowing industrial production to flow to the coast and then export or import to the world, the US does not have large population concentrations along the canal that cuts through the country and reaches the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, this was an advantage before the industrial revolution, but it is no longer, because containers transport more intermediate products, which China dominates. Meanwhile, the American advantage has simply evaporated with the explosion of manufactured goods and global maritime trade.
Faced with this new international scenario, China turned to the sea and is currently one of the major players in world maritime trade in the 21st century. Officially, since Hu Jintao declared at the 18th National Congress of the CPC, held in 2012, that the PRC is determined to build a strong maritime power in the 21st century, the phrase "building a strong maritime power" has become a popular political slogan in China.
