Posted on 10/22/2014 2:34:18 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Work on China's second locally designed and built aircraft carrier will soon get under way at Jiangnan Shipyard, overseas reports says
China will soon start building its second locally designed aircraft carrier in Shanghai, according to a Canadian report.
Kanwa Asian Defence, an English-language monthly defence review produced in Toronto, said Shanghai's Jiangnan Shipyard was preparing to start work on the carrier.
When completed, the carrier and another under construction in Dalian will give the PLA Navy two fully functioning, battle-ready aircraft carriers.
The recently completed Liaoning, the refitted former Soviet carrier Varyag, is classed as a training platform, not a full combat vessel, by the navy, since it went into service in September 2012.
Counter to many expectations, the new carrier about to be built at the Jiangnan Shipyard will use conventional, not nuclear power.
The report was also carried in the Chinese-language sister publication, Kanwa Defence Review.
Military experts said China would not attempt a nuclear-powered carrier until a range of issues were resolved, such as the reliability of nuclear-powered engines, crew training and establishing a reliable home port for carrier maintenance.
According to the report, Chinese shipbuilding industry sources said the design for the second carrier had not been completed.
The Kanwa report countered earlier predictions by Western analysts that the new carrier would be nuclear-powered, like the planned Soviet Ulyanovsk-class carrier.
The Ulyanovsk was slated to be Moscow's first nuclear-powered supercarrier, with an 85,000-tonne displacement. But like the Varyag, the ship was never completed and the hull was scrapped in 1992.
Last year, China Shipbuilding Industry Corp, the largest state-owned shipbuilder, said Beijing had approved funding to develop core technology for nuclear-powered ships, which to many observers indicated plans to build nuclear-powered carriers.
Li Jie , a military expert in Beijing, said China already had experience with maritime nuclear power, but so far the technology was restricted to the PLA's growing submarine fleet.
"Compared with submarines, a carrier is much bigger. It will take time for our nuclear engineers to develop a safe and powerful engine capable of driving a huge platform of more than 100,000 tonnes," Li said.
The first locally designed carrier is being built in Dalian, where the Liaoning was completed in a decade-long fit-out.
The Dalian Shipyard completed the new carrier's steel plate cutting ceremony at the end of last year.
Looks very British to me.
...maybe one day China will send all their manufacturing back to the US so that we can build crapping plastic consumer goods for the Chinese at low prices...ironic!
You learn how to die now!
America is supporting Chinese efforts by buying everything from China.
We run a 30 billion dollar deficit with China every single month.
Both parties are sold out.
Bring back jobs to AMERICA. Stop financing our competition.
You overlook the salient fact...... China is
Look it is time to recognize we are creating a problem for Anerica, in China.
A generation ago, we decided it made sense to build up China. Because China was weak, cheap, and subject to a political flip, we latched onto them and helped them grow.
It was a political effort, as well as a commercial effort. For an entire generation now, America has launched on a huge “build stuff in China” effort.
The thing is, now China is the problem.
China now makes more than America makes. We import everything from a country which does not even allow American direct investment, does not allow Americans to immigrate, and only allows Americans to be minority investors in anything.
America we are completely asleep.
We have allowed a minority of investors, to completely squirrel America’s investment into a Chinese subsidy which pays off a small section of what used to be America’s investment environment, while selling off jobs to China.
Big time.
Yet we stand around running a massive trade deficit, and say not one single word.
Republicans, we need to stand up for working Americans.
Bring back American jobs. Right now.
America needs to make things right here.
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