外军对新华社发报航母消息的评论Dispatch: China's First Aircraft Carrier

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Vice President of Strategic Intelligence Rodger Baker discusses the military and political implications of the imminent launching of China’s first aircraft carrier.

China’s state news agency, Xinhua, has published pictures of the Varyag, an aircraft carrier that the Chinese bought from the Ukrainians that they’ve been slowly working to develop and deploy. The pictures are accompanied by a note that suggests that after 70 years of Chinese hopes, this carrier is finally going to float this year.

It’s interesting that Chinese state media is finally publishing pictures of the carrier. This has been about the worst-kept secret in the history of military development; everyone has seen pictures — either satellite pictures or on-the-ground pictures — of the Varyag throughout its refit by the Chinese. That they’re finally putting imagery in the state media suggests that they may actually be nearing the point of putting this to sea.

There’s been a lot of concern raised by China’s neighbors — by the United States — of Chinese maritime intent, of the expansion of Chinese activities in the South China Sea, of a seemingly more assertive China in pushing what it considers to be its own naval territory. The deployment of the Varyag finally into this mix will certainly add to those concerns. The Varyag would technically allow the Chinese to move air assets further away from their shore, give them additional capabilities within the narrow constraints of the South China Sea. There’s been a lot of debate as to whether or not the Chinese included the South China Sea as one of their “core national interests” in some documents last year. It’s unclear whether they did or they didn’t, but certainly the Chinese have been acting in a manner that suggests that they are going to be much more aggressive in pushing their claim to the territory, as well as pushing to work bilaterally with some of the countries along the region, in an effort to keep the United States out of the mix.

Carrier operations are not something that’s easy to do, it’s going to take a very long time for the Chinese to be able to work through the various technicalities of this. It’s also not something they’re going to be able to learn from other people. The Russians haven’t done carrier operations a very long time and United States is certainly not going to be training them. So this is going to be years before the Chinese really have the coordination to be able to move large carrier battle groups anywhere. And that assumes also that China builds more carriers. A single carrier gives you almost no capability. It’s got to be in port, it’s got to be in for refit, it can only go to one location. Until they have about three carriers, they really don’t even have the opportunity to maintain a single carrier on station at any given point in time.

This is really more about politics rather than about military capabilities at this moment. Certainly, the Chinese will use this to learn, to train, to be able to develop new capabilities. But it’s about giving the sense that China has emerged, that China really is no longer just a second-tier country, but economically, politically and militarily, China is one of the big boys now.

战略情报副总裁罗杰贝克讨论了中国的第一艘航空母舰即将发动的军事和政治影响。

中国的国家通讯社，新华社发表了瓦良格，一个航空母舰的中国从乌克兰，他们一直在慢慢地努力开发和部署购买图片。这些照片都附有一张纸条，上面表明，经过70多年的中国的希望，这个载体最终将在今年浮动。

有趣的是，中国官方媒体终于出版的载体图片。这已经对最坏的保存在军事发展史上的秘密，每个人都已经看到照片 - 无论是卫星照片或实地图片 - 在其整个的瓦良格由中国改装。在国家媒体终于把他们的图像表明，他们实际上可能已经接近了这把出海点。

还有备受关注很多由中国的邻国提出的 - 由美国 - 中国海上意图，对中国的活动，在南中国Sea扩大，在推动它认为是它自己的海军境内的一个看似更自信的中国。作者：瓦良格终于到这个混合的部署肯定会增加对这些关注。技术上的瓦良格将允许中国移动的空气资产进一步远离岸边，让他们在南中国海的狭窄限制的其他功能。有一个被很多辩论是否中国列为他们的一个“核心国家利益”的一些文件，去年南中国海。目前还不清楚他们是否做了或他们没有，但肯定的是中国已经在方式，表明他们要在推动他们的主张的领土更加积极，以及与一些推动双边代理工作沿线地区的国家在努力，以保持美国出了组合。

运输作业是不是一件很容易做到，它将会在中国采取一个很长的时间才能通过这一工作的各项细节。这不是他们也将能够学习其他人。俄国没有进行运输作业很长的时间，美国当然不会是培训。因此，这将是几年前的中国确实有协调，能够移动的大型航母战斗群的任何地方。而这还假定中国建立更多的运营商。单载波几乎没有能力给你。这一定是在港口，它有要在改装，它只能去一个地方。直到他们对三家运营商，他们真的不甚至有机会维持在任何特定时间点上站单载波。

这实际上是政治而不是关于军事能力在这一刻了。当然，中国将用它来学习，培训，能够开发新的功能。但它是关于中国给人的感觉已经出现，这确实是中国不再仅仅是一个二流国家，但在经济上，政治上和军事上，中国现在是一个大男孩。
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