Ben Ho Wan Beng
Last month, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) published a report that has a section outlining how China would likely use its aircraft carriers as part of Beijing’s much-touted anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategy. Citing declassified sources from Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND), the report added that Chinese carrier operations are “geared towards ‘denying’ the United States military access to the Taiwan Strait area of operations.”
While many naval observers — including this author, who previously covered this issue on these pages — believe that carrier strike groups (CSGs) of the People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) would only have a limited role to play in a Taiwan contingency, the MAC seems to suggest that this would not be the case — and perhaps with some credibility, given that the council drew its conclusion from MND sources.
How then would such a scenario — let’s say in the late 2020s, which brings China’s carrier total to three — possibly play out and what to make of it?
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