Behind China’s race to build aircraft-carriers

Just before Christmas, the Pentagon quietly released its annual report on the Chinese armed forces. The public document, based on classified intelligence assessments, was quickly picked over by military analysts around the world. Buried on page 16, they found a startling statement: China plans to build six new aircraft-carriers before 2035.

That prediction would see China building aircraft-carriers at more than twice the clip of America, which plans to construct only three of them over the same period. But America also plans to retire three carriers in the coming years, meaning that by 2035 America will have 11 such vessels to China’s nine. And because China will probably concentrate its navy in Asia, Chinese carriers will soon outnumber American ones in the Pacific.

That alone would be a big power shift in a region where the American navy’s seventh fleet has dominated sea lanes for over 80 years. America’s carriers are the crown jewel of the world’s leading maritime power. But China is not just building more carriers—it is also making more sophisticated ones. Its latest, Fujian, was commissioned in November. The new ship (pictured) launches aircraft using an electromagnetic catapult, rather than steam. It is only the second such system in the world; the other is on America’s latest carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford. And China’s first nuclear-powered carrier is under construction in the northern port city of Dalian. Subsequent carriers are likely to be nuclear, too. That will give them more range than conventionally powered ships.

Whether China can make the most of these new vessels remains an open question for many experts. To be considered effective, a carrier needs to be able to launch at least 100 sorties a day, says Alessio Patalano of King’s College in London. It is not yet clear if the Chinese carriers can do that. But in other ways, China’s existing carriers are making progress. In October 2024 the Chinese navy conducted dual-carrier operations for the first time. Two carriers worked together as they sailed, allowing them to pack a bigger punch than two operating alone would have done. And they are sailing on more distant sorties from China than ever before. In December a carrier was spotted near Palau, one of a string of island states aligned with America in what strategists call the “second island chain”, an arc that extends from Japan to Papua New Guinea.

A bigger question is why China wants so many carriers. In debates about the future of America’s carrier fleet, some Western analysts say such ships have no future. Advances in anti-ship missiles and drone warfare, they say, have made them obsolete. But China appears to be ignoring such talk. Its potential adversaries lack large stocks of long-range anti-ship missiles, which are thus less of a threat to Chinese carriers than to American ones. And many drones are limited in range, reducing their power as an anti-carrier weapon.

Still, in a fight with America over Taiwan, carriers might be less useful. After all, Taiwan is well within range of airbases on the Chinese mainland. China’s carrier plans, then, point to much broader ambitions. Aircraft-carriers would be particularly valuable in protecting shipping bound for China, and stanching the maritime trade of adversaries in the event of war. “These are power-projection platforms for achieving sea control,” says Tom Shugart of the Centre for a New American Security, a think-tank in Washington. It is becoming clearer that China aspires to be top gun far beyond its shores. ■