Eric Gomez, The Diplomat: Keeping China’s Aircraft Carriers in Perspective
China’s investment in aircraft carriers will take a great deal of time and money to reach its full potential.
The Liaoning, China’s first aircraft carrier, recently completed its first live-fire exercises before sailing from the Bohai Sea to Hainan Island. Additionally, its first indigenous aircraft carrier, the Type 001A, is under construction at Dalian shipyard and should be completed in the first half of 2017. In 2015, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense reported that a third aircraft carrier is being built in Shanghai. These ships will add a new capability to the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), but the threat they pose should be kept in perspective. China’s aircraft carriers will affect the balance of power in East Asia, but local states have ways to mitigate the impact and maintain deterrence.
China’s rapid carrier buildup represents a major change in its naval acquisition policy. In a 2015 Washington Quarterly article, Yu-Ming Liou, Paul Musgrave, and J. Furman Daniel III point out:
For the past several decades, [PLAN] acquisitions had focused not on matching the U.S. Navy force structure, but rather on countering U.S. strengths with asymmetric capabilities.
Indeed, several new Chinese weapons systems have been called “carrier killers,” including the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile, and the Type 052D destroyer armed with YJ-18A anti-ship cruise missiles. These and other so-called anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) systems represent the Chinese military’s comparative advantage vis-à-vis the United States, which makes the recent large investment in aircraft carriers somewhat puzzling.
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WNU Editor: I concur with this analysis. It will take two decades (maybe more) and a few hundred billion dollars for China to build a significant number of carriers with support ships before it can match the U.S. Navy .... and a big maybe at that.
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