Summary: China is aggressively expanding its aircraft carrier fleet, confounding Western analysts who view carriers as outdated due to advanced anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) systems. Critics misjudge China's strategic intentions and fail to recognize the dual utility of these developments.

-China’s naval strategy, echoing American practices from a century ago, aims to assert regional dominance and challenge U.S. supremacy.

-By replicating historical U.S. strategies and Mahan’s naval theories, China intends to control regional access, leveraging its carriers alongside A2/AD capabilities to dominate the Indo-Pacific and compel neighboring countries into submission, challenging the U.S. at sea and reshaping global maritime dynamics.

China’s Rising Naval Power: Behind Its Expanding Aircraft Carrier Fleet

China keeps growing its aircraft carrier fleet. Many analysts are confused by this because the age of the aircraft carrier, thanks to the advent of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) systems, is basically coming to a close. 

Western observers spent decades mocking China’s rise, claiming them to be little more than imitators of the West rather than what they really are: a serious, near-peer challenger that will use everything it can to leverage its bid to replace the United States as the world’s dominant power. 

These same so-called analysts now insist that China’s bid to build an aircraft carrier fleet of its own—even as they develop A2/AD systems designed to negate America’s aircraft carrier advantages—is both wasteful and not a serious threat.

Getting China Wrong on Aircraft Carriers 

Of course, these ignorant analysts are wrong. Just as they’ve been wrong about everything regarding the meteoric rise of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since former President Jimmy Carter officially recognized them as the only legitimate government of China (leaving the Republic of China in Taiwan in the strategic and diplomatic lurch) in 1979. 

As my colleague, David P. Goldman, has so rightly analogized the CCP to the Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation, China has simply been assimilating all the West’s technological distinctiveness into its own collective. In many cases, this was done with the help of greedy and short-sighted Westerner leaders and businesspeople. 

Anyway, the card-carrying members of what my colleague, Michael Walsh refers to as Washington’s “Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party” who spend their days mocking China for the supposedly failed investment into an aircraft carrier fleet have forgotten America’s own history from a century ago. 

Back then, the United States, much like China today, was a rising naval power seeking to displace the British Empire. Like China today, the Americans did not try to reinvent the wheel. They engaged in wanton industrial espionage against their British rivals—much as the upstart Chinese do to the ignorant and arrogant Americans—and kept pace with the British that way, sapping them slowly-but-surely of their relative strength. 

What’s more, as it relates specifically to naval strategy, the Chinese appear to be replicating the theories of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century American naval strategist, Alfred Thayer Mahan.

China Goes Full Alfred Mahan

In his Treatise on the Influence of Seapower Upon History, Mahan outlines the need for a rising naval power to prevent any other powers from enjoying access and freedom of movement in the region closest to the rising naval power’s shores. 

Today, China has developed their A2/AD strategy to achieve this goal.

It is only a matter of time before those potent A2/AD systems are deployed in a grand strategy of denial against the US Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. Once denied access to the region, the US military will be hard-pressed to burst those A2/AD bubbles. While they might be able to do that, the costs to the US military might greater than what Washington would be willing to accept.

Denial is Part of Their Game of Dominance

For example, Chinese naval strategy calls for using their complex A2/AD systems to sink up to two US aircraft carriers in the opening phases of any war with the United States over control of Taiwan. The balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, in regions closest to China’s shores, have shifted toward China’s favor years ago. 

Beijing’s ability to deploy large numbers of relatively cheap, but effective long-range ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons, and drones—all coordinated using sophisticated radar and satellite capabilities—means that large surface warships, like American carriers, would find it nearly impossible to evade these Chinese A2/AD attacks for very long.

And this is where China’s indigenous aircraft carrier fleet comes into play. 

Because, as Mahan clearly outlined in his definitive treatise on naval power a century ago, once the rising naval power can control access to its part of the world (as the British did with the English Channel after defeating the Spanish Armada and as the Americans ultimately did with the Caribbean Sea), they can then exert unchallenged influence and dominance over their area. 

If the Chinese A2/AD strategy of denial is as good as it seems to be on paper, then, China can deploy its growing—and increasingly sophisticated—carrier fleet to menace their neighbors, forcing those neighbors to do that which they historically did to China’s empire: kowtow. 

Don’t Laugh: China is Getting Ready to Checkmate the US at Sea

In sum, China’s carrier fleet is the second stage of their multi-pronged Mahanian strategy of naval dominance. They first deny access to their region with their comprehensive, decentralized, and advanced A2/AD functions. Once they have effectively denied the Americans access to their region, then Chinese carriers can operate more openly and dominate their neighbors (as well as the sealanes closest to China). 

Sadly, the US is no longer led by men who either understand Mahanian strategy or agree with it. We have forgotten the methods our forefathers used to take away Britain’s dominant position. 

Our enemies, such as China, have learned these lessons well and are now using the very same tactics and theories that our forefathers used on Britain, only against us today. If the Chinese can keep US power projection away from the regions they covet, then quite suddenly, their carriers become real strategic assets.

The best thing for Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, and India to do now would be build up their own A2/AD forces to make Chinese carriers as useless as China plans to make US carriers. We are quickly reaching the sad, inevitable moment when the US Navy won’t be answering their calls for help against China.

About the Author

Brandon J. Weichert, a National Interest national security analyst, is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, the Asia Times, and The-Pipeline. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His next book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine, is due October 22 from Encounter Books. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

All images are Creative Commons.