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In the 1950s there were concerns about China great “awakening”, with the biggest population and the highest potential of any developed Asian nations. Since 1990 and the end of the bipolar threat, China has the ambition to create a blue water navy of such importance that it is rated nowadays the #1 concern for global American Strategic thinking. Ranking #2 just behind the US Navy, the PLAN (People’s Liberation Army Navy) is resolutely Adopting a more active, ambitious, even aggressive stance, according to increasingly worrying Asian neighbors..
There are tensions and concerns about the South China Sea, East China Sea EEZ, and Paracel Islands. Territorial disputes which concerns also Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam, all navies that were comprehensively modernized since the 2000s, with much larger budgets. There are major tensions (new “incidents” are for the moment not excluded) towards the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu), with a considerably reinforced JSDNF. Since commercial lines and Chinese oil supplied passes through the Indian Ocean, the Indian Navy also considerably reinforced its potential recently (an incident occurred already off the Vietnam coast with the INS Airavat in 2011)..
.Naval ensign of China
On a more positive side, the Chinese Navy also participates actively to anti-piracy operations, a good way to train personal and justify the Navy’s growing budget but moreover safeguard trade routes. A massive deployment started on 18 December 2008 in Aden’s Gulf, in response to Somali pirates attacks on Chinese ships and hijacking attempts. Since then, more than 30 ships had been deployed in this area to this day. One ship also took part in the Libyan civil war, and another had some role in the Yemen conflict, in both case performing evacuation of nationals and not nationals like Pakistani personal..The PLAN is in a transition phase from an essentially coastal defense navy in 1990 towards a blue water navy of comparable assets to the US Navy in this area. This goes in par with the building of new aircraft carriers (the first of which is the unnamed yet 001A), and a fleet of modern destroyers with a comparable to the US/Japan AEGIS type system to defend these task forces..
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From 2012 the asserted strength of the PLAN is about 280,000 personnel and approx. 500 ships excluding auxiliaries) and 700+ aircrafts, including carried helicopters and long-range naval planes. The Navy is divided into five branches: The Submarine Force, the Surface Force, the Coastal Defense Force, the Marine Corps (personal 10,000, well equipped) and the Naval Air Force (26,000 by 2015).
The PLA Navy Headquarters directly under the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party. Actual Commander is Vice Admiral Shen Jinlong, assisted by Political Commissar Admiral Miao Hua..
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**Type 055 are cruisers by NATO standard, large destroyers for PLAN
***Freedom and Independence class LCS
****class as destroyer escorts
*****17 LHDs, 30 LPDs, 17 LSDs..
A seen above the Chinese Navy’s combined corvette+frigate+destroyer force is now superior to either the USN or the JMSDF, Chinese carriers are also superior in capabilities to the Japanese vessels, and the JMSDF being traditionally defense-oriented has a very limited amphibious component. On this chapter the USN had still a clear advantage over the PLAN with thrice as much LHDs and generally larger LHDs/LSDs. And it doesn’t includes is still large LST force. But the most striking point is the Chinese strenght in “green water navy” assets (large and small OPVs, FACs, sub chasers, auxiliaries), which explained its world’s largest tonnage. And i did not included the coast guard here. The Chinese one is on par with the USCG. This part will be developed in detail in the coming months.
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U.S. Navy: Trending in the Wrong Direction
Other US military officials and Chinese naval analysts are equally alarmed about the speed and overall volume of output at which China’s naval shipyards operate. The Chinese shipbuilding industry’s capacity is considerably larger than that of the US, producing trend lines of what will be the future fleet dispositions of the PRC and the US running in opposite directions.Speaking as to the outcome of a US-PRC battle if Beijing were to attempt to invade the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan, “the United States will prevail in the conflict as it stands now, with the force that we have right now,” Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo told the McCain Institute’s annual Sedona Forum in Arizona on Friday, 2 May.
Paparo was speaking just one year after taking over at Indo-Pacific command and stressed that the US military holds key advantages over PLAN in undersea warfare capabilities and in the domain of space and weapons that can neutralize space assets. However, his overriding concern is that the PRC is building weapons systems—particularly naval vessels—at a rate that significantly outpaces US shipyards..
The PLAN’s modernization push involves more than aggressively building ships, aircraft, weapons, and C4ISR (command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) platforms. In addition, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) naval arm is also focused on improving every aspect of building a new force structure.
This means increasing and improving the forces’ logistics capabilities, developing and refining doctrine, improving personnel quality through improved education and training, and conducting more realistic and interactive training exercises. Due to the overall nature of a military service operating in a dictatorship like the PRC, the PLAN suffers from limitations and shortcomings that are largely consequences of the political constraints imposed on it.
In the end, the service is officially working on modernizing its capabilities to react to any crisis or mission anywhere on the globe. But in reality, the PLAN has a singular obsession at the center of these modernization initiatives—all geared towards the military situation on the ROC. All other requirements are secondary....
By 2022, China’s Navy will outnumber the US and in the 2030s will achieve qualitative parity.China’s Navy will have a larger number of ships and submarines than the US Navy in 2030..
China’s navy will be approaching 500 ships by 2030 and the US Navy will have between 300 and 350 depending upon which budgets get adopted.
China’s navy will be a Blue-Water Naval Power by 2030: China is rapidly transforming itself from a continental power with a focus on its near seas to a great maritime power with a two-ocean focus. The PLAN is looking beyond the san hai – the Yellow Sea, South China Sea, and East China Sea – and out toward the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
By 2030, many forecasts suggest that China will be quantitatively on par with the United States, while others suggest Beijing may even have a significantly larger naval order of battle than the United States.
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