CHINA’S FIRST aircraft carrier has embarked on sea trials in a potent demonstration of the growing naval power that is creating pride at home and concern elsewhere in the region.
While China says it will only use naval power for defensive purposes, others say it is increasingly aggressive in pursuing its claims.
Hours after the trials began, Taiwan pointedly unveiled its most advanced missile, hailing it as “an aircraft carrier killer”.
The refitting of the former Soviet vessel is part of China’s broader naval modernisation programme, which includes heavy spending on submarines and the development of an anti-ship missile system. It comes amid growing competition with the US and India, and a string of maritime disputes with closer neighbours.
“This is showing to the whole world that China’s maritime mobility is expanding drastically,” said Yoshihiko Yamada, a professor at Japan’s Tokai University. “This is showing that China is in the process of acquiring capability to control the South China Sea as well as the East China Sea.”
In the past year China has had a series of territorial spats with Japan over islets in the East China Sea, and with the Philippines, Vietnam and others over the South China Sea, the location of essential shipping lanes and important natural resources, including oil and gas. Those disputes are complicated by underlying competition with the US and India.
“By itself, the ship does not erode the credibility of America’s military presence in the region nor greatly increase China’s power projection capabilities,” said Dr Ian Storey of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.
“Nevertheless, the vessel is a potent symbol of China’s aspirations to become a global maritime power and is yet another indication the military balance of power is gradually shifting in China’s favour.”
Last week, Japan’s annual defence report said the Chinese navy was likely to increase activities around Japan and warned that China had acted “in a way seen as coercive” in conflicts. Beijing responded by accusing Tokyo of irresponsible exaggeration.
The test is a small step in the long journey towards building a viable carrier group, but it is already stoking unease in India and prompting fears of an arms race between Asia’s two emerging powers.
The Indian Ocean is fast becoming a zone of contested influence between Beijing and Delhi.
Indian strategists have been particularly worried by a string of ports constructed with Chinese assistance in Burma, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
"The carrier will add a new dimension to the burgeoning Chinese navy, which could provide a major challenge to India in its backyard, the Indian Ocean," the Times of Indiasaid yesterday.
Despite a £10 billion (€11.37 billion) modernisation programme, much of the Indian armed forces’ equipment is outdated and efforts to build or buy aircraft carriers have been hampered by political wrangling and red tape.
The Indian navy has a small 50-year-old 28,000-tonne carrier, which it bought from the UK in 1987, but it aims to have at least two aircraft carrier battle groups in operation by 2015.
The ongoing refit of the 44,570-tonne Admiral Gorshkov, purchased from Russia in 2005, and the construction in India of a new 40,000-tonne carrier, are expected to be completed in the coming three to four years.
“We are definitely looking at deploying two aircraft carriers by the middle of this decade,” assistant chief of naval staff Rear Adm Anil Chawla said earlier this year.
Defence analyst Ajaj Shukla said India retained the lead in naval aviation but there was a clear fear of “the projection of Chinese power into the northern Indian Ocean in a new way”.
“The Chinese are at an earlier stage but once they set their minds to operating a naval air arm they will catch up pretty fast so it is being carefully watched,” he said.
"Its [the trial's] symbolic significance outweighs its practical significance," Ni Lexiong, an expert on Chinese maritime policy at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, said. "We're already a maritime power, and so we need an appropriate force, whether that's aircraft carriers or battleships, just like the United States or the British empire did." – ( Guardianservice)