Print

Mail

wiki links

Chinese official asserts right to build carrier: report

The Ministry of National Defense pressroom said yesterday that the military was aware that China is intending to build aircraft carriers.

It also said Taiwan’s security would be seriously threatened if China possessed one aircraft carrier with a combat group that could deploy around Taiwan in the event of war.

The remarks were in response to reports that Major General Qian Lihua (錢利華) asserted China’s right to build an aircraft carrier in a interview with the Financial Times yesterday, without making direct comments on whether it had decided to do so.

Qian, director of the Foreign Affairs Office at the Chinese Ministry of National Defense, said that if China did build a carrier, it would only be used for offshore defense.

“Navies of great powers with more than 10 aircraft carrier battle groups with strategic military objectives have a different purpose from countries with only one or two carriers used for offshore defense,” he said, apparently in reference to the US.

The US has 11 aircraft carriers, the report said.

“Even if one day we have an aircraft carrier, unlike another country we will not use it to pursue global deployment or global reach,” he said.

The interview comes amid widespread speculation inside and outside China that Beijing is planning to acquire an aircraft carrier.

Earlier this year, the head of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Timothy Keating, was reported to have said that Chinese military leaders were intensely interested in such an acquisition.

In March last year, a Beijing-backed Hong Kong newspaper reported that China could have its first aircraft carrier by 2010.

This would likely trigger serious fears, especially in the US, about China’s global ambitions. The Times said Qian’s remarks were unlikely to address concerns over how it would affect a conflict involving Taiwan.

But the Chinese official noted that on a wider scale, it was “unreasonable” for Western countries to continue to call on Beijing for peacekeeping missions but at the same time maintain curbs on arms exports imposed in 1989.

“US and EU countries on one hand ask us to send more troops to peacekeeping operations overseas, while on the other, they still have such arms sales embargoes on China. I think that is quite unreasonable,” Qian said.
This story has been viewed 1437 times.