China’s Newest Military Carrier Comes With a Sinister Goal…

Only a few days ago did China just launch their first next-generation aircraft carrier.

Fujian, the country’s third carrier, is more technologically advanced than those that came before it. And similarly to the modern US carriers, it utilizes electromagnetic catapults to launch an aircraft off the flight deck. 

The Center for Strategic & International Studies has dubbed this vessel as a significant upgrade to China’s naval capabilities.

China Daily reported on the new carrier, stating that it is the largest ever built by an Asian country and will displace over 80,000 metric tons of water. As a comparison to the new vessel, the Nimitz-class of U.S. aircraft carriers displace over 100,000 metric tons of water. Meanwhile, China’s other two carriers, CNS Liaoning and CNS Shandong, displace only about 50,000 metric tons.

Research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore Collin Koh commented that the carrier is likely to be a “game changer” for the Chinese navy.

“The conventional flight deck with (electromagnetic catapults) will at least in theory allow the carrier to launch aircraft faster and with heavier payloads — which constitute key deciding factors during battle,” he reportedly told global news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP). “At a strategic level, the new carrier heralds the coming of age of a blue-water PLA Navy.”

The new carrier is thought to be part of China’s modernization effort in a three-phase strategic plan by the Chinese Communist party (CCP) to achieve the utmost military supremacy by 2049, which marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

The goal is known as  “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

And of course, the U.S. Department of Defense is taking this long-term goal by the CCP seriously. The Pentagon, in a 2021 report, wrote: “The PRC’s strategy aims to achieve ‘the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’ by 2049 to match or surpass U.S. global influence and power, displace U.S. alliances and security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region, and revise the international order to be more advantageous to Beijing’s authoritarian system and national interests.”

And it appears that American military planners are not the only ones who are taking CCP’s geostrategic ambitions very seriously.

“Phase One would see the Chinese military compete with the United States from a position of technological inferiority,” according to a report from Robert O. Work and Greg Grant, Distinguished Sr. Fellow and Adjunct Sr. Fellow (respectively) at the Center For a New American Security. They assert that Chinese military writings in the late 1990s and early 2000s sought ways to defect a technologically superior adversary, “until such time that their modernization efforts were able to narrow the advantages enjoyed by the U.S. military.”

Phase Two occurs when the Chinese begin to establish technological parity with the U.S. in “guided munitions and battle network warfare,” a step they say will make it more likely China can deter a U.S. military attack in the East Asian sea. It’s the stage where they assemble a world-class military and “assume a leading position within the international order.

The third and final phase is the achievement of military superiority over the U.S., enabling them to disburse U.S. forces.

The report states: “China’s leadership has laid out its goals for a fully modernized PLA by 2035, and elevating the PLA to the world’s premier military force by the 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China in 2049, one capable of winning informatized wars.”

As we can see from internal documents, clearly China is thinking very long-term for its military planning. And the debut of it’s newest carrier which can rival U.S. vessels is only one other steps along the path to matching and then surpassing the U.S. as the world’s superpower by 2049.

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