Hopefully, China isn’t “sneaking up” on anyone by now. From her hospital ships in Europe to her economic and military presence growing in non-traditional areas from Africa to Latin America, she will continue to fly her flag in places no one is used to seeing her before the last two decades.
The approach to mid-century will tell us where on the spectrum from economic competitor to conflict our relationship will settle, but we need to watch what she is doing now and where that will take her in the medium term.
We also need to consider that her numbers do not necessarily mean the same thing as our numbers. As we’ve discussed before, think along naval interior-vs-exterior lines of communication and porcupine theory – not how the USN needs to operate.
Here are a few pull-quotes from a nice snap-shot article from the Indian media with some interesting numbers that should give everyone an opportunity to think a bit more about what the Chinese Navy will look like soon.
By 2050, China is likely to have the largest navy in the world, unless the US navy overcomes its resource crunch. The quality of ships, their armaments and performance is comparable with most modern countries.
Chinese shipbuilding speed has impressed everyone across the board.
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China’s shipyards do not have the word “holiday’ in their dictionary. There are no Sundays or special festival days observed in any of the shipyards. There are no death anniversaries of politicians, leaders or martyrs observed as holidays.All shipyards work on three shifts of eight hours in a day. The workforce is regularly circulated. There are no unions calling for shut downs.
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Students in universities are being encouraged to build new designs and innovate on already existing designs.
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The construction of most of the large ships is done in modules, produced either at the same shipyard or at different shipyards, and brought for assembly. These modules are joined together to form the basic structure of the ship, which is later fitted out, thereby saving enormous amount of time.
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The monopoly of shipyards in producing a particular type of ship has been broken. Now, different ship types or classes are assembled and built in most of the shipyards.The Type 52D and Type 55 are being built at Jiangnan Changxing, popularly known as JNCX, along with the Yuanwang and MCMVs. In December 2016, there were at least 16 different ships being constructed at Jiangnan Changxing at a particular time.
Similarly, Dalian shipyard is constructing three Type 52D, two Type 55 and also the CV-17 at the same time.
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The newly built facilities for construction of submarines at Huludao and Jiangnan Changxing are very large. The sizes of 290m X 135m are indicative that at any given time a minimum of four submarines will be under construction at these two yards.
Will their economic growth and changing demographics support this growth over the next couple of decades? As that is a question that also applies to us, we should assume so.
As such, how does this emerging, large, and capable navy at the other end of the Pacific change our assumptions not just about how we operate, but what we build?
