ABSTRACT
The news that China is to develop its first aircraft carrier, a reconditioned Ukrainian ship, elicited much concern and consternation among American policy makers and pundits-although the United States is so far ahead in its program that it struck its first purposebuilt aircraft carrier in 1946 and retired its first one, built over 50 years ago, soon after China’s announcement.2 Since the carrier is traditionally regarded as the conduit for extended power projection, some American analysts expressed concern that this development marked a watershed in China’s shift from a continental to a regional military power, given Chinese claims of sovereignty over the South China Sea. What was less justifiable was the suggestion that this marked China’s transition from a regional to an intercontinental power, one that would soon overtly challenge the United States for global military supremacy. Ignoring both America’s inordinate military capability and expenditures, critics of China reached back into the pantheon of Cold War rhetoric in portraying an image of China’s imminent rise to superpower status and challenging America’s military supremacy. Implicitly, they painted a picture of this aircraft car-
rier, or one like it, “steaming up the Hudson” as the Chinese invaded New York.3
