CHINA WATCHThird Aircraft Carrier to Help China Match U.S., Japan in Western Pacific: Analysts
China has launched a third aircraft carrier, likely a way to upgrade overall defenses in the face of stronger navies rather than to target any specific future battleground, analysts believe. A third aircraft carrier would place China in a group of just 16 countries worldwide with the massive seaborne military airports. Around the Pacific, India, Japan and the United States operate carriers or are developing them.
China has launched a third aircraft carrier, likely a way to upgrade overall defenses in the face of stronger navies rather than to target any specific future battleground, analysts believe.
The carrier, called the Type 003 and christened Fujian, left its drydock at a shipyard outside Shanghai Friday morning and tied up at a nearby pier, state media reports said.
A third aircraft carrier would place China in a group of just 16 countries worldwide with the massive seaborne military airports. Around the Pacific, India, Japan and the United States operate carriers or are developing them.
China is after the same thing others are, experts say, which is proving to themselves and foreign governments that its carriers can someday work well together alongside older military units, if needed, as Western-backed rivals gain their own strength at sea.
The People’s Liberation Army Navy China received its first carrier, named the Liaoning, in 2012. It’s an overhauled former Soviet vessel bought from Ukraine. In December 2019, the navy got the Shandong, its second carrier and the first one built domestically.
“To develop aircraft carriers and enhance the ability to safeguard world peace is a necessary requirement for China to fulfill its international obligations,” said Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C.“China is committed to the path of peaceful development and firmly pursues a national defense policy that is defensive in nature. The possession of aircraft carriers will never change that.”
Slow Uptake
The latest Chinese carrier must train for another two to three years before making any formal deployments, analysts believe.
Huang Chung-ting, associate research fellow with the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei, suggested the Type 003 may have been rushed into production to satisfy Chinese officials and some of its parts might not work as designed or as well as peers from other countries.
“Whether China’s technology can reach its ideal capabilities, we need to monitor their training and sea trial results and see,” Huang said.
“I think these PLA’s aircraft carriers have no way to do long-term activities outside the first-island chain,” he added. “Their power is actually, for the most part, in the near seas inside the first-island chain.”
