Aircraft Carrier Project
The Chinese colloquial abbreviation for aircraft carrier, hangmu, is also used extensively to describe flagship enterprises and other great achievements. China's navy will develop a new generation of warships and aircraft to give it much longer-range capabilities, its commander-in-chief said in comments published Thursday April 16 2009. Admiral Wu Shengli told the state-run China Daily newspaper the Chinese navy wanted to develop hardware such as large combat warships, stealth submarines with abilities to travel further and supersonic cruise aircraft. More accurate long-range missiles, deep-sea torpedoes and a general upgrade of information technology were also in the pipeline, according to Wu.
"The navy will establish a maritime defense system that corresponds with the need to protect China's maritime security and economic development," Wu said. The English-language China Daily, which the government uses to deliver messages to a foreign audience, printed his comments on its front page and said it had obtained a rare interview with such a high-ranking military figure. It quoted other Chinese military figures as saying that Wu's reference to building large warships referred to highly-publicized plans to build an aircraft carrier, but also other unspecified vessels.
GlobalTimes, a somewhat more strident government mouthpiece, wrote 25 December 2016 "As China’s only aircraft carrier fleet now, it should have the ability and courage to sail further. It should not only pass the first island chain, but also sail past the second island chain and go to the waters where Chinese cruise fleets have never been. The Chinese fleet will cruise to the Eastern Pacific sooner or later. When China’s aircraft carrier fleet appears in offshore areas of the US one day, it will trigger intense thinking about maritime rules.
"The distant sailing of the Chinese aircraft carrier fleet is not aimed at provoking the US nor at reshaping maritime strategic structure. But if the fleet is able to enter areas where the US has core interests, the situation when the US unilaterally imposes pressure on China will change. China should speed up launching its new aircraft carriers so as to activate their combat. In addition, China needs to think about setting up navy supply points in South America right now."
Although China has developed an aircraft carrier very fast, the gap with the US Navy remains huge. The US has 11 aircraft carriers in service and all of them are nuclear-powered large-size (100,000 ton-class). These war fleets offer the US capability to launch military operations worldwide, but China's defense strategy is different, so Beijing will not try to build so many aircraft carriers, Wang Yunfei, a Beijing-based naval expert and a retired PLA Navy officer, told the Global Times on 15 May 2018.
While aircraft carriers are used for overseas military operations, China's effort at developing them doesn't mean it is seeking naval hegemony like the US, Wang said. "The PLA Navy's mission is to safeguard China's sovereignty, territorial integrity and national interests, rather than play 'world police.'"
China will deploy the aircraft carriers in the regions important to its national interest. Currently, the Western Pacific Ocean and the Northern Indian Ocean are important for the country's national interests, said Senior Colonel Zhang Ye, a research fellow at the PLA Naval Research Institute. Most of China's security concerns emanate from the Western Pacific Ocean, including Taiwan and the South China Sea. The Northern Indian Ocean is significant since China's economic development and energy supply depend on the crucial trade routes that pass through the region.
In order to deal with the worst-case scenario in the two regions, China at least needs six aircraft carriers, experts said. It needs to maintain effective military presence in the Pacific and Indian oceans and in 10 to 20 years, China will complete this goal. Ideally, four of these carriers will be nuclear-powered, Wang said. "They won't make China more aggressive just improving its capability to defend its interests. It is almost impossible to see a massive naval battle between China and other naval powers in regions far from Chinese territory." In the short run, China is unlikely to use its carriers for a conflict with any country, Zhang said. "They will more likely be used for non-combat purposes such as UN missions for anti-piracy, disaster relief, peacekeeping and evacuation."
Language and words contain infinite charm and possibilities. Sometimes, just a slight change in one word can make a phrase, a sentence, or even a paragraph change dramatically. Therefore, "picking on words" is not a pretentious act, but a manifestation of the spirit of exploration and research. Now, from the change in the name of the People's Navy's aircraft carrier formation by the domestic official media, observes read the huge amount of information hidden behind it. Compared with the aircraft carrier formations of other countries, the US Navy aircraft carrier formation not only maintains a strong anti-sea and anti-air combat capability, but also has a land strike capability that other countries cannot achieve, and is thus named an aircraft carrier strike group.
In July 2024 reports on the PLA Navy by CCTV's National Defense Military Channel, there were contents related to China's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning. One point worth noting is that the official no longer calls the Liaoning aircraft carrier formation an "aircraft carrier battle group", but uses the term "aircraft carrier strike group". This is quite sensitive because before this, only the US Navy had an aircraft carrier strike group in the strict sense . Now, the People's Navy's aircraft carrier formation can also be called an aircraft carrier strike group, which reflects the major changes and developments in the combat functions of the aircraft carrier formation.
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