China Trying to Keep Secret the Fact That It Is Building Second Aircraft Carrier

Simon Denyer

February 2, 2015

BEIJING – News that China is building a second aircraft carrier has been leaked by an over-enthusiastic local government, but reports were subsequently deleted from Web sites and social media here, a development that will do little to calm nerves among neighboring countries about Beijing’s growing maritime power.

The government in Changzhou, in eastern Jiangshu province, boasted on social media on Sunday that a local firm had won a contract to supply electrical cabling for the carrier. It later deleted the post, but not before it had been widely circulated. A report in a local newspaper was also withdrawn.

Although China has made no secret of its desire to expand its navy and add to its sole aircraft carrier, the news is a reminder of Beijing’s growing military might and the assertive way it has gone about staking its territorial claims in the East and South China Seas in recent years.

In December, a U.S. congressional commission predicted that the Chinese navy would have more military vessels than its American counterpart, warning that “the balance of power and presence” in Asia was shifting in China’s direction.

Although China’s military capabilities lag far behind those of the United States, defense spending here is growing by double digits annually. Last week, the country’s defense ministry spokesman, Col. Yang Yujun, said that military training this year would focus on improving its capability to win “local wars.”

In an opinion piece, the nationalist Global Times newspaper pointed out that China, the world’s second largest economy, lagged not only behind developed countries but also India in terms of its aircraft carrier fleet.

While India has two carriers in operation and one under construction, China has just one — a training ship rebuilt from an old Soviet carrier — Sun Xiaobo wrote in the paper, saying that the solitary vessel was “no match to its economic strength.”

“China is entitled to build more aircraft carriers,” he wrote. “In recent years, China has faced Western-backed provocations from neighboring countries over disputes in the East and South China seas, which entails a stronger military deterrence to safeguard its national security.”

China says Japan and the Philippines in particular are being encouraged by the United States to take more assertive stances in their territorial disputes with Beijing.

Last year, the Communist Party secretary of Liaoning province, was reported to have said that construction of a second carrier had already begun in the shipyard in Dalian, where the first carrier is also based, adding that work would be completed by 2020. The China Digital Times, an organization monitoring online censorship here, said that authorities had ordered all reports of his remarks to be deleted.

The purchase of China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, had a considerable element of subterfuge about it. A Hong Kong-based businessman and former People’s Liberation Army basketball star, Xu Zengping, bought the ship from Ukraine in 1999 claiming he planned to turn it into a floating casino in Macao. Instead he gave it to the authorities, who refurbished it and eventually put it into service in 2012.

China had been reluctant to purchase the ship in the 1990s because it was trying to repair its international image after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre; instead naval officials approached Xu to buy it on their behalf, the South China Morning Post reported. But, in an interview published last month, Xu told the paper that China had never repaid him any of the $120 million it ended up costing him.