By Harry Kazianis
A lot of Chinese hardware could challenge US primacy in the Pacific. Carriers are not among them.
As someone who has made a career of tracking China’s latest defense technologies, let me clue you on a little secret: Beijing’s new carrier, supposedly being built in Dalian, is no military threat for the foreseeable future. In fact, don’t even waste your time reading about whatever rumor comes next. There is a lot of Chinese hardware that could challenge U.S. primacy in the Pacific— but carriers are not one of them.
Before I get into why, a little background is in order.
China has been researching, thinking about, and studying carrier technology for decades but is just now building its own flattops. PLAN Admiral Liu Huaqing, who most scholars consider the founder of China’s aircraft carrier research program, believed that Beijing’s maritime doctrine should evolve through a two stage effort with carriers being a big part of such a plan. Step one would be (PDF) “a ‘green-water active defense’ that would enable the PLAN to protect China’s territorial waters and enforce its sovereignty claims in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.” While scholars can argue the point, in many respects, China seems close to achieving such a goal. The second part would be to “develop a blue-water navy capable of projecting power into the western Pacific.” As noted back in 2004 in the US Naval War College Review (PDF) (USNWCR), “aircraft carriers were needed to protect China’s sovereignty and maritime resources, especially with regard to Taiwan and the South China Sea; guard China’s sea lanes of communications as the country industrialized and increasingly became a major trading power; enable China to keep up with regional powers such as India and Japan; and give the PLAN a decisive edge in future naval warfare.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat