China continues to pursue the notion of building its own aircraft carriers and could have any number of them over the next decade or so, but it remains unclear just how many Beijing wants, a senior U.S. defense official said Thursday.
The official, discussing the Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on China’s military buildup, said even as China experiments on an aircraft carrier it purchased 16 years ago, it is clearly moving toward producing its own, possibly by the 2020s.
“How many they are going to end up developing in the future is not clear at this point, but they’ll have a number of them,” said the official, speaking to reporters under the condition of anonymity.
China bought what is now called the Liaoning, or CV-16, from Ukraine in the late 1990s and completed its refurbishment and construction. The People’s Liberation Army’s Navy commissioned the carrier in 2012 had it has since been used to learn about aircraft integration and operations, as well as for training, to inform China’s intention to build a fleet of indigenous carriers.
“It’s a new thing for China,” the official said. “China is trying to figure it out and use the Liaoning as a platform to test out ideas for carrier operations.”
Overall, China continues to build up and modernize the PLA, the official said, spending a U.S. estimated $145 billion on the military in 2013. That continues a steady annual increase as the country tries to assert power and expand its presence in the Asia-Pacific region. Beijing does not publicly detail its annual defense spending, despite attempts by U.S. officials to persuade their Chinese counterparts to be more transparent.
The official said the U.S. government examines how China funds its military and draws an estimation on total spending, something the official said Washington is getting better at. The official said Beijing’s modernization of the PLA is widespread, and covers strategic nuclear and conventional ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, advanced fighter aircraft, surface combatants, submarines, space and cyber capabilities, and integrated air defenses as well as land and amphibious attack capabilities.
“I don’t think that there’s really any part of the People’s Liberation Army that is not undergoing some type of reform, modernization or transformation,” the official said.
The official said China’s defense industry has also grown in its capability to produce advanced systems, making the country much less dependent than it had been importing defense technology or products.
“China is increasingly able to develop on its own what it used to have to procure from abroad,” the official said. “China’s defense industry is really changing, improving and modernizing.” He said there are still some weaknesses, however, such as making advanced aircraft engines. He also noted that China continues to obtain new technology and know-how “illegally and legally.”