CHINA: Construction to start on aircraft carrier
Updated
In a sign of its strategic ambitions China is set to begin construction on its first aircraft carrier. Chinese media has reported several companies have already received contracts on the development of systems and components for the future aircraft carrier.
Presenter: Bill Bainbridge
Speakers: Dr Paul Monk former head of china analysis at Australia's defence intelligence organisation and co-founder of the AUSTHINK consultancy.
Over ten years ago China was reported to have aquired an old Russian aircraft carrier with a long term view of developing one of their own.
Beijing has consistently denied media reports that it could build its first aircraft carrier as early as 2010 but Chinese officials admitted in March that the country was conducting research in aircraft carrier technologies. But with the letting of contracts for aircraft carrier components China watchers the long held ambition has finally been given the green light.
Dr Paul Monk is the former head of china analysis at Australia's defence intelligence organisation and the co-founder of the AUSTHINK consultancy.
He says it will be a long time before the carrier has an impact on China's military capability.
MONK: It's one thing to physically develop an aircraft carrier, it's altogether another thing for that to have a substantial effect in terms of military clout. And for a couple of reasons: one is, it takes years of training and exercises for anyone's navy to be able to use one effectively. The second thing is if you've only got one, you can't use it much at the time it'll be in dock undergoing repairs and all sorts of things - they're very high maintenance.
BAINBRIDGE: Nonetheless, the world has been watching the development of China's military capacity very closely.
A Japanese Defense Ministry report issued earlier this month noted China's defence budget had seen double-digit nominal growth for the 19th straight year, hitting 42 billion dollars for fiscal 2007, up 17.8 percent from the previous year.
MONK: It's going to be a focus of a lot of careful attention by regional powers starting without any doubt, with Japan. So Sino-Japanese tensions, if you will, and uncertainties about one another, will be heightened by the idea of China building an aircraft carrier. There are limitations on just how much difference this will make in the short-term, but as a signal of where China is heading and what it would like to be able to do - it's pretty significant.
BAINBRIDGE: Do you think it's aimed at any conflict inparticular?
MONK: I'd hesitate to say that it's aimed at a conflict. That is to say an intention for offensive use and a long-range plan. But I would say there is no question China has as a strategic priority, sought to develop the capability to use force across the Taiwan Strait and deter the United States form intervening on the side of the Taiwanese.
BAINBRIDGE: Do you think then it will be setting off any kind of alarm bells in Washington?
MONK: I don't know about new alarm bells, put it that way. The pentagon has been for some years now drawing attention to the fact that China is clearly putting very substantial resources into seeking to turn itself into pretty much a first class military power. The thing is, if the US is your benchmark, there is no other first class military power in the world at the moment, the US is so far ahead.
BAINBRIDGE: Paul Monk says there are those in the Chinese military and government who won't rest until China regains its historical position as a great naval power.
MONK: It is a pretty clear indication that China is embarking on this idea of developing a more serious bluewater navy, and China's not had a bluewater navy for about 600 years. The last time China had naval flotillas of substance, of world class that could sail into the oceans of the world, was actually in the 15th century. But I think there is a vision among China's strategic and naval planners of developing a bluewater navy steadily over the next few decades that really will be, to some extent at least, on a par with the US navy in the Pacific - that's the big vision.
