Comments by China's national defense spokesman last month make it about as official as it's going to get: China's navy is in the market for an aircraft carrier. This is a sign that Beijing sees its ultimate prize within grasp: emergence as East Asia's preeminent great power. So should the region, and the protector of its stability for the last half century, the United States, be worried?
First things first: China is not about to knock America off its perch as the world's sole superpower. Developing the capacity to deploy aircraft carriers is a feat of incredible complexity. China's carrier project will take at least a decade to realize, and it will require billions of dollars and a great deal of the country's military design capacity.
[...] Yet there's every reason to believe China will achieve its goal eventually and deploy multiple carriers. It will likely start by using aircraft bought from Russia but go on to develop its own weapons systems. China will end up with a much smaller ship than the American super-carriers, with weapons about a generation behind. But this will still put it far ahead of its neighbors -- no East Asian country currently has carrier capacity.
Wanted: an aircraft carrier. Signed, China
An friend of mine, a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, drew my attention to this piece in yesterday's WSJ:
NB: A decade is not as long as it seems.