U.S. Asks China To Explain Its Carrier

Aug 10, 2011 by

The United States has asked China to explain why it needs an aircraft carrier on Wednesday amid concerns that the carrier will only increase problems in the region. China’s “new” carrier, an old Ukrainian ramp deck carrier, has begun its sea trials well ahead of schedule and is expected to enter service later this year. China has maintained the statement that the vessel will only be used for “testing and training” rather than enforcement of its assets. The United States clearly doubts that is the case. China plans to clone and build up to three more of the carriers in its own shipyards in the coming years.

“We would welcome any kind of explanation that China would like to give for needing this kind of equipment,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters when asked whether the carrier would raise regional tensions.

Defense Tech has shown that China is outfitting the vessel with modern weapons and defenses which lead many to believe that it will be used in a similar fashion to the United States’. It makes sense considering China’s deep feuds with Taiwan and other nations who travel through the South China Sea including the United States. China likes to claim waters that are actually international waters as their territorial space and it has caused many problems in recent years.

According to Military Times over the past year, China has seen a rise in spats with Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam and had its relations strained with South Korea — all of which have sought support from Washington, long the pre-eminent naval power in Asia. Washington might be more pressed to show its force with China’s naval expansion.

This is part of our larger concern that China is not as transparent as other countries. It’s not as transparent as the United States about its military acquisitions or its military budget.

China defends its military ambitions and carrier program by saying that it is the only permanent member of the UN Security Council who lacks carriers and that it has a massive amount of coastline to protect. With China now claiming the spot as the second largest economy it feels it is lagging behind other nations smaller than itself that have purchased these ships from abroad. China also says that their carrier will be used for humanitarian purposes but many naval experts have pointed out that the type of carrier China is deploying is ill suited for that job due to its ski jump flight deck.

In our military-to-military relations with many countries around the world, we have the kind of bilateral dialogue where we can get quite specific about the equipment that we have and its intended purposes and its intended movements,” she said.
But China and the United States are “not at that level of transparency to which the two nations aspire, Nuland added.

Tensions between the United States and China have been on the rise recently and China made a point of reminding the U.S. who owned most of their debt. While it is believed that China will use this carrier for more nefarious purposes they still have a long way to go to fully challenge the United States’ 11 carrier battle groups. The presence of a fully loaded Chinese carrier in disputed waters may deter the United States from using such brazen shows of force in waters that it currently freely roams.

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Associated Press

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