You know your navy has a problem when it can’t decide whether to use a second-hand aircraft carrier to beef up its fleet or turn into a floating casino.
China is on a mission to develop its armed forces to a state befitting a world superpower, and this includes developing a blue water navy capable of carrying out missions far from home.
The mainland has plenty of submarines, nuclear and otherwise, and its coastal vessels include scores of frigates and destroyers. There are heaps of amphibious vessels and landing craft, all developed with Taiwan in mind.
But there is one box that has always remained empty as the fleet inventory was ticked off – aircraft carriers. It appears that has all changed.
It emerged in the South China Morning Post recently that China has made a breakthrough of sorts and now has not one, but two, aircraft carriers. Well, sort of …
One of the carriers is made of concrete and is situated in the inland province of Hunan near the capital of Wuhan. It has a flight deck, ramp and tower and stands on top of an office building, so it won’t be sailing anywhere anytime soon.
The second carrier is the Soviet-era Varyag, a 67,000-tonne ship that was half finished in a Ukrainian yard when the Soviet Union collapsed. In 1992 the ship was structurally complete but without electronics. Ownership was transferred from the USSR to Ukraine and the ship was stripped of anything of value or that could be used elsewhere.
China bought the hull and superstructure of the Admiral Kuznetsov-class vessel for US$20 million in 1998. It wasn’t much more than an empty hull and at one stage there were plans to turn the ship into a floating casino. At a cost of just US$20 million, the investment would surely have been returned in a long weekend.
National security trumped that idea, however, and the ship is now being completed for an expected operational arrival in 2015. Along with the land-bound Wuhan ship, the Varyag will be used as a training platform to prepare officers and crew for the real deals, although the first aircraft carrier is not expected to float out of Shanghai’s Changxing Shipyard much before 2020.
The US does not appear to be unduly startled by the news, with Washington betting that China has a long way to go before being capable of actually fielding a modern carrier battle group.