http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking+News/Asia/Story/STIStory_303629.html
Chinese aircraft carrier?
LONDON: The world should not be surprised if China builds an aircraft carrier, a senior Chinese military official has told a British newspaper.
But a China-built carrier would only be used for offshore defence, said Major-General Qian Lihua, director of the Foreign Affairs Office at the Chinese Ministry of National Defence.
His comments come amid heated speculation within China and abroad that the increasingly potent naval arm of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has decided to develop and deploy its first aircraft carrier. Traditionally, a carrier would accompany and protect a battle group of smaller ships.
In March last year, a Beijing-backed Hong Kong newspaper reported that China could have its first aircraft carrier by 2010. The Pentagon said this year that China was actively engaged in aircraft carrier research and would be able to start building one by the end of this decade. Last month, Jane's Defence Weekly reported that the PLA was training 50 students to become naval pilots capable of operating fixed-wing aircraft from such a carrier.
Maj-Gen Qian declined to comment directly on whether China had decided to build a carrier, but in the defence ministry's most forthright statement yet on the issue, he made clear that China had every right to do so, said the Financial Times.
'The navy of any great power...has the dream to have one or more aircraft carriers,' he said in the interview, believed to be the first arranged by the defence ministry on its secretive headquarters, which is omitted from many municipal maps.
'The question is not whether you have an aircraft carrier, but what you do with your aircraft carrier,' he told the FT.
Though he did not mention the United States by name, he pointedly contrasted the function of a possible Chinese vessel with the way the US Navy uses its 11 carriers. 'Navies of great powers with more than 10 aircraft carrier battle groups with strategic military objectives have a different purpose from countries with only one or two carriers used for offshore defence...Even if one day we have an aircraft carrier, unlike another country, we will not use it to pursue global deployment or global reach.'
That pledge is unlikely to reassure those in the region concerned about the PLA navy's emergence as a blue-water force. An effective Chinese carrier could have serious implications for any conflict involving Taiwan by strengthening the mainland's ability to counter the island's air force and control its sea lanes. Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan and threatens military action against the island if it tries to pursue its goal of independence.
Taiwanese separatism is the 'biggest threat' China currently faces, said Maj-Gen Qian, who insisted on US dropping military support for the island.
Admiral Timothy Keating, head of the US Pacific Command, said in Beijing last year that China's development of a carrier should not be the cause of any unnecessary tension, and that the US would even be willing to lend a helping hand.