Legislator: China should build its own aircraft carrier
China has started a new round of taikonauts selection, and five to seven will enter the finalist, said an officer of the country's space program on Thursday morning.
\"The new taikonauts will mainly take missions related to China's planned space station,\" Zhang Jianqi, deputy chief commander of the manned space project, told Xinhua on the sidelines of China's parliament annual session.
Zhang, also a deputy of the National People's Congress (NPC), or parliament, is attending the NPC annual session which opened in the Great Hall of the People in downtown Beijing.
\"Like the first batch of taikonauts, the new taikonauts will be selected from among air force pilots,\" said Zhang.
He also confirmed that taikonauts including Yang Liwei, the first Chinese ever sent into space, will not retire, and might take missions if duty calls.
China sent its first astronaut Yang Liwei into space in 2003 riding self-developed spacecraft Shenzhou-5. It was followed by a two-man mission that carried Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng in 2005.
The trio of Shenzhou-7 taikonauts Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng orbited the earth for three days last year.
Zhai became the first Chinese to \"set foot\" on outer space on Sept. 27, 2008. His spacewalk lasted about
20 minutes and was believed to help pave the way for the country's next space mission-- the launch of a space lab or space station.
Source: Xinhua
Speculation grows on China aircraft carrier plans
BEIJING (AP) — China will have an aircraft carrier \"very soon,\" a top Chinese naval officer told a newspaper published Friday, fueling speculation over a pending official announcement on the long-awaited project.
The Global Times newspaper cited east China fleet commander Adm. Xu Hongmeng as saying China possessed both the ability and motivation to build a carrier — a weapon system that is strongly backed by the navy but somewhat less enthusiastically by the People's Liberation Army's top commanders.
\"China really needs a carrier. Both technologically and economically, China already has the capacity to build a carrier,\" said Xu, who was quoted while attending the national legislature's annual session in Beijing on Thursday.
\"China will very soon have its own aircraft carrier,\" he told the paper, published by the Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily.
Xu's remarks came on the day the central government announced its 2009 budget, including a 14.9 percent rise in military spending this year to 480.68 billion yuan ($70.27 billion). No breakdown of the defense budget was provided.
Xu did not say when a carrier might be added to the fleet or whether work had already begun on one, saying only, \"as for the specific construction situation, you need to ask the shipyard.\"
Beijing has been researching an aircraft carrier for years, having bought and towed to China a mothballed Russian carrier, the Varyag, in 1998. The PLA is also rumored to have purchased four carrier landing systems and up to 50 Russian Su-33 carrier-based aircraft.
Strategically, a carrier is seen mainly as a deterrent to U.S. intervention in a conflict over Taiwan,
although Chinese experts say it would mainly serve to police the 1.16 million square miles (3 million square kilometers) of sea claimed by Beijing as its maritime territory.
A carrier would also provide vital air cover in the event of a conflict farther from China's shores, either in the South China Sea, where it has feuding territorial claims with other nations, or in the crucial sea lanes of the Indian Ocean.
Chinese officers and commentators have also focused on the importance of a carrier as a symbol of national strength, noting that China is the only permanent member of the United Nations Security Council not to have one in its fleet.
\"Building aircraft carriers is a symbol of an important nation,\" former navy political commissar Hu Yanlin was quoted as saying in Friday's China Daily newspaper.
China's navy is planning major celebrations for its 60th anniversary next month, and Asian media has speculated an announcement about a carrier could be made on that occasion.
PLA Daily commentator: China’s aircraft carrier program
represents active move of peaceful development
2011-7-28 20:52 Hot 0 View 0 Reviews(0)
PLA Daily commentator: China’s aircraft carrier program represents active move of peaceful development
For a long time, people had been holding widely divided guesses about reasons for the development of China’s first aircraft carrier. According to information released from an authoritative source, China is refitting the flat-top deck of a disused aircraft carrier mainly for scientific research, experiment and training. Aircraft carriers which came to the fore in as early as the World War II are by no means novel equipment. However, this move by China still catches a lot of attention and interest of the international public.
The fact is that among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the BRICs, China is the only one that does not own an aircraft carrier. Even some other Asian countries go ahead of China in this regard. For China, owning an aircraft carrier to build strong naval defense is a matter of course and a reason for congratulation.
China is one of the large countries with long coastlines in the world, and maritime interests doubtlessly constitute an important component of national interests. As an old Chinese saying goes, \"If the ruler wants the country to be rich and strong, he can by no means ignore the sea which presents wealth as well as danger.\" From 1840 to 1949, China was invaded hundreds of times and forced to sign over 700 humiliating treaties by big powers that came by sea. The humiliation Chinese people suffered
[Report]
during the Opium War and the Sino-Japanese War in 14-15 served as a bitter lesson that China cannot do without coastal defense. China's defeat also proved true the saying of a Western strategist, \"Without a navy, the will of the state that we want to express at a critical moment is reduced to be a clumsy and useless posture of a giant with feet stuck in mud.\"
The 21st century is called the century of sea. The sea has already become an important space to extend national interests, and maritime security has become a major domain of national security. The fight for maritime interests is increasingly fierce. However, interests can only be guarded by power. Making efforts to build a strong navy that matches China’s national status and the interests of national development is a response to the objective demand posed by the historical mission of the People’s Liberation Army in the new century and the new period and an inevitable choice to safeguard China’s national interests in the context of globalization.
Some people argue that China will pose threat to the world when it owns an aircraft carrier. Such argument is entirely out of ulterior motives. Whether the aircraft carrier is used for offense or defense as a combat platform essentially depends on the national defense policies and military strategies of a country. The Chinese nation loves peace and pursues justice. To stick to the road of peaceful development is the strategic choice that the Chinese government has made according to the trend of the times and its fundamental interests. The development of China will be the development of a power committed to peace. China will never seek hegemony and never resort to military expansion and arms race at present and in the future, no matter how developed China becomes. With the passage of time China is bound to amaze the world with its prosperity.
As Deng Xiaoping said, \"the more powerful China becomes, the safer the world will be\China is developed, the force of peace to contain war will be stronger\". Even though China may develop aircraft carriers in the future, it will not pose any threat to other countries, but will shoulder more responsibilities for world peace. Commentator with PLA Daily
