China recently launched its third aircraft carrier, an 80,000-ton monstrosity named Fujian. The New York Times described this as a sign of China’s growing naval ambition. “China’s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier, the Fujian, officially entered into service this week, the country’s military announced on Friday, bringing Beijing another step closer to its goal of rivaling American naval power in the region,” the paper of record wrote of the Chinese vessel closest in size to an American carrier, which all displace about 100,000 tons. The Fujian is also distinguished as the first Chinese carrier with an electromagnetic catapult. All the Chinese carriers are diesel powered, limiting their voyage distance and capability compared to American carriers, which are all nuclear powered.
In one way, the Fujian is indeed a sign of Chinese growing ambition. Carrier operations are no joke. The Americans, the British, and the French have the only navies to continuously run carrier fleets from the end of the Second World War until now. While the quality and power of these carriers vary, nothing in naval warfare is more a deliberate show of force than parking grey hulks of over 40,000 tons that can launch dozens of planes in a matter of minutes in the vicinity of another state’s coastline. In previous eras of great power rivalry, the power with more skill in operating carrier forces won. Both Imperial and Nazi Germany’s navies were dwarfed by the British Home fleet. The Bismarck, the pride of the Kriegsmarine, was surrounded and destroyed in one of the greatest acts of naval revenge in modern military history. The British Eastern Fleet was torched by Japanese bombers in Singapore. Japan in turn was destroyed by the might of the American carrier fleet at Leyte Gulf and Midway. During the Cold War, the Russians never could master carrier construction and operation at scale, ultimately renewing their focus on asymmetric power and balance enforced by nuclear submarines.
Naturally, the growing Chinese navy will send shivers down the spines of those doing tabletop simulations in Langley and Arlington. But one needs to be cautious about inflating the threat posed by the Chinese three-carrier problem. The Chinese have years to master carrier operations in a manner that might be an advantage to them during a conflict. Consider that, at any given time, in a blue-water navy around a third of the capital ships will be either under maintenance or repairs. The U.S. for example, runs a maximum of four carriers at any given time, with the rest either in port or being prepared to sail. The same goes for any major navy. Those who cannot manage that often leech off of escort ships from other allied navies. The British carrier fleet, for example, often carries ships from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and at times even the Netherlands.
The Chinese navy will face the exact same issue. The carriers and escorts that China operates are also not battle-tested. It is one thing to sail a fleet and perform a show-of-flag in disputed waters. It is an entirely different thing to face fire from a peer rival. The same logic that dictates against American fleets in the Pacific under an area-denial strategy will also apply to a Chinese fleet operating under similar conditions. Ships sink. The bigger the ship, the bigger the chances of hitting it from far off weaponry. Cheaper swarm weapons will overwhelm massive expensive platforms. The logic of warfare remains the same.
The one area of caution for American policymakers is the sheer math of Chinese manpower and production capacity. If Beijing has decided on imperialism and conquest, they can employ millions of people at a very low cost. The challenge ahead of the U.S. is therefore twofold: the number of workers and their cost. Americans don’t have the numbers to compete with Chinese manufacturing, and nor are they willing to work at Chinese manufacturing wages. The U.S. did not historically face a similar problem in its rivalries with Germany (due to low labor cost, higher population, and allied partners) or the USSR (due to enormous gap of technology, the free market incentivizing further innovation, and, again, allied partners).
China is a different beast due to its sheer size. If the U.S. decides that rivalry with China will be the all-encompassing story of this century—not at all a given—then the course of action would entail a combination of intense localized training of American workforce by a combination of government programs and private enterprise, an insertion of select talent from across the world, and some form of reshoring or nearshoring of manufacturing and resources. The other option is to avoid any rivalry with China whatsoever and implement a de facto G2 to accommodate the rise of Chinese ambition, similar to how Great Britain accommodated the rise of Teddy Roosevelt’s America.
Ultimately, those are political choices. But the current system of massive importation of foreign working classes without any local training or talent-building is a dead-end either way. The rivalry with China is about American prosperity above all; counting naval tonnage is a flawed lens for viewing such a prospect.
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