China launches first home-built aircraft carrier
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The Type 001A vessel, which has yet to be named, was on Wednesday bedecked in red flags and coloured streamers as tugboats towed it out of a shipyard in the northern city of Dalian, in a ceremony kept secret until the last moment.
The 311m carrier, with an upward-sloping “ski jump” deck, is slightly larger than the Liaoning, China’s first carrier, which was made from a former Soviet hull bought from Ukraine in 1998.
Constructing its second carrier itself symbolises the growing power of the People’s Liberation Army Navy as it moves away from pure coastal defence to securing China’s interests across the western Pacific and Indian Oceans.
The carrier “embodies the expanded naval capabilities of the PLA, which is to reach a blue-water power projection capability”, said Jack Midgley, director of the strategy consulting practice at Deloitte in Tokyo.
However, he said the vessel would not in the short term materially change the balance of power in the western Pacific, where China and the US are engaged in a strategic contest over control of the South China Sea.
Mr Midgley said the second carrier was likely to be used mainly for training, similar to the Liaoning.
Conventionally powered, the Type 001A has a slower speed and far more limited range than a typical US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Meanwhile, its ski-jump deck, which uses the “short take-off but arrested recovery” (Stobar) system for launching and recovering aircraft, can only handle shorter-range J-15 fighters. The steam or electromagnetic catapult used by US carriers can launch longer-range, heavier aircraft.
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However, Chinese pilots are training with a steam catapult on land and a third aircraft carrier may well be fitted with one.
More importantly, China’s navy would require years of training before being able to undertake effective carrier operations that typically involve large numbers of ships, said Gary Li, an expert on China’s military with APCO Worldwide, a Beijing-based consultancy.
The ship may be used “for deterrence, for a show of force”, he added.
“Parking a carrier task force in the South China Sea is a great way to make a point,” he said, but “obviously they don’t expect this to be on par with a US carrier”.
A 2015 white paper drafted by the defence ministry said China’s navy would gradually shift its focus from “offshore waters defence” to “open-seas protection”.
Song Zhongping, a Beijing-based military expert who previously served in the PLA rocket forces, said the carrier would probably enter service in 2019.
“The South China Sea is exactly where the aircraft carrier comes in,” he said. “Its role will be to help build China’s Great Wall of the sea, in line with the basic security plan of Chinese navy.”
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