Nails for Hammers: China’s Aircraft Carriers and a Search for National Strategy

• In Event: Chinese Naval Power

Abstract

As a necessary tool for any great power that seeks to project military force globally, the aircraft carrier is freighted with both practical and symbolic significance—a material manifestation of how a great power sees its role in the world. In this context, scholars have examined China’s aircraft carrier program, divining Chinese intentions and future actions largely from historical, primarily Western practice. This paper seeks to shed light on Chinese strategic thinking about its carriers through an examination of Chinese sources themselves, with implications for Chinese foreign policy and Western perceptions.

This paper makes two primary arguments. First, contrary to the Western consensus on how China will use its carriers and what that would mean for China’s role in the twenty-first-century international system, this paper argues that Chinese strategic thinking on carriers is still highly diverse and is not settled in the way that Western analyses tend to suggest. Over a decade after commissioning its first carrier, Chinese military scholars still show little coherence on what national missions Chinese carriers are supposed to execute; thus, assumptions about how China will use military force as a great power this century—and the policies upon which such assumptions are built—remain highly questionable.

Second, this paper argues that, while the debate over specific missions remains unsettled, Chinese scholars do seem to show greater consensus on the places where Chinese carriers should be postured: the “near seas”—the East China Sea, the South China, and the Yellow Sea. This suggests that Beijing will remain focused on regional issues for the foreseeable future and that, contrary to some Western scholarship, Chinese military projection beyond the western Pacific will remain the exception, not the rule.

Overall, this paper argues for a re-think of predominantly Western assumptions of Chinese foreign-policy and military behavior in the twenty-first century. China’s plans for its carriers (currently numbering three, and still growing) remain very much up for debate, and International Relations scholarship needs to be attuned to Chinese strategic thinking itself and avoid the trap of mirror-imaging.

Author

• Brian C. Chao, Naval War College