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China and the aircraft carrier it doesn't have

Fresh from a visit to China, the new commander of US military forces in the Pacific said he found Chinese military leaders intensely interested in acquiring aircraft carriers. At the same time, Admiral Timothy Keating said: "I suggested let's not be naive about the complexity of those ships, and they are not cheap."

The admiral, a naval aviator who has made 1,200 carrier landings, said all the Chinese leaders with whom he spoke during a five day stay earlier this month indicated their inclination to pursue the development of aircraft carriers.

No one said "we're not going to do this," he said in an interview at his Pacific Command headquarters overlooking Pearl Harbor.

Keating declined to speculate on when China might start building a carrier but said it took the US Navy, even with the most extensive experience in the world, more than a decade to design, build, equip with aircraft, and train air and ship crews. This would be a profoundly difficult venture if the Chinese chose to undertake it, he said.

In 1954, at the height of the transition from propeller aircraft to jets, the US Navy experienced nearly 800 plane crashes. Even as late as 1999, the Navy lost 22 planes flown by the world's most experienced aviators.

Internal discussion and external speculation over China's acquisition of an aircraft carrier has been churning along for at least 25 years but now seems to have picked up momentum. Keating said he sensed that, just below the surface, the Chinese saw aircraft carriers as potent symbols of great power status, a clear Chinese aspiration.

The US Pacific commander also made a point cited by several predecessors cautioning his hosts not to misjudge US military capacity or intentions. He urged that both Chinese and Americans take all necessary measures to avoid miscalculation or misunderstanding.

We were not bellicose about it, he said. Rather, he said let's make sure we don't get into situations where there would be recourse to military force.

An early Chinese advocate of aircraft carriers was Admiral Liu Huaqing (劉華清), who pushed for their acquisition from the time he became chief of the Chinese navy in 1982 until he retired as a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission in 1997.

To modernize our national defense and build a perfect weaponry and equipment system, the admiral once wrote, we cannot but consider the development of aircraft carriers.

So far, the Chinese navy has concentrated on buying submarines from the Russians or building them. That policy, however, will most likely not last much longer, said Andrew Erickson and Andrew Wilson, of the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. While submarines seem to be ascendant, they wrote last fall, the Chinese are still actively engaged with the carrier question and are reframing the debate.

Five reasons come to mind as to why China could build an aircraft carrier: international prestige, power projection (especially in the South China Sea), defending lifelines (especially for oil passing through the Strait of Malacca between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea), regional rivalries (especially with competitors India and Japan, who have better sea power), and relief operations (such as the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean).

China would not need a carrier to attack Taiwan, as land-based aircraft and missiles would make up the brunt of an assault.

The Chinese have bought four decommissioned carriers since 1985; the Melbourne from Australia and the Minsk, Kiev, and Varyag from Russia. The three former Russian ships are tied up and open to the public as educational museums. What the Chinese have learned from those ships can only be speculated.

Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii
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