China needs to raise its military capabilities to protect its growing overseas interests, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said following the launch of China’s first domestically built aircraft carrier, while vowing not to pursue expansionism.
China launched the carrier on Wednesday amid rising tension over North Korea, and regional worries about Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea and its military modernization program.
Speaking during a visit to Germany, Wang said Chinese businesses and citizens had spread all around the world, with millions of people living overseas and nearly 30,000 Chinese-funded businesses registered in other nations.
“Under this new environment, China has ample reason to raise its own national defense capability to effectively protect its fair rights that are increasingly extending overseas,” Wang said in response to a question on the new carrier, according to a statement on the ministry’s Web site yesterday.
China would maintain a “defensive” military policy and had “no intention to engage in any kind of expansion,” he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) “One Belt, One Road” infrastructure plan to forge enhanced trade corridors linking Europe and Africa with Central Asia and China further underscore the long-held blue-water ambitions of his naval strategists.
The state-run Global Times said the launch represented a “milestone” in military development.
“Building a strong defense ... with a widespread global reach is now necessary to protect China’s businesses and the massive interests that arise from them,” the paper said in an editorial yesterday. “Having a domestically built aircraft carrier is also inspirational. China is taking concrete steps to be a first-rate power.”
State media has quoted experts as saying China needs at least six carriers.
Speaking at a monthly news briefing, Chinese Ministry of National Defense spokesman Yang Yujun (楊宇軍) would not say how many more carriers China wanted to build, only that developments could give “overall consideration” to various factors.
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