Chinese Carrier Issue

Seen the hotly debated topic about Chinese carrier, there are few points I think people should consider when they discussing this topic.

1. We(China) is a developing nation, and most of our military budget is relatively small for a large country, thus even if we can aquire carriers (import of indiginous) its very hard to maintain more than 1.
The truth is that both the military has very little money for development of weapons and aquirment of weapons each year, if large portion of this money goes into maintaining a carrier fleet, then it would affect the long term defense development.

2. A single carrier is a coffin with out support of capable surface, submarines and aircraft (as in a carrier fleet). As anyone can see, our navy’s destroyers, frigates are quite weak in ASW and anti air warfare, thus are not capable of escorting the carrier. Most of our aircraft fleet is also not suitable for carrier operations, certainly J-8II and JH-7 is out of question, and the most likely solution for this would be importing SU-33 (our pilots have expeirence on the SU-27SK, so it would be easier to train them on SU-33), and use a STOBAR option for the carrier. the carrier would also need AEW, COD and ASW aircraft, which we certainly dont have, and there are no clear option for it in near future. Even if we can import capable ships and aircraft in near future, maintainence cost and availability for imported weapons will be a headache for the navy.

In the end, everything is about cost, its very simple, we cant afford it YET, so we cant have it. I think there would be little chance to see a Chinese Navy Carrier with in 20 years time, and the little money that is available should better go into development of building assymetric warfare capabilities for now.

Steam fish