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Most people never bought the story that the Chinese bought this relatively new carrier hull from Ukraine to make it into a floating Casino...particularly when it was revealed that the "company" that bought it had extremely close ties to the Chinese Military (surprize), and then especially after the purchase and towing to China when that "company" went out of business.

Now, as work continues and the vessel takes on more and more vistage of a ship being worked on and potentially prepared for service, that is all the more obvious.

China is embarked on one of the largest naval military buildups in history. Given the miriad of new vessels they are building, including all of the vessels necessary to comprise a Carrier Battle Group, except the carrier, an operational Chinese carrier group in the China Sea will pose a major upset in the balance of power.

For much more information on the Chinese Naval buildup, see:

I am sure they are trying to build a carrier. So what? They are going to deploy one half-@$$ed carrier against the entire USN? How long is it going to take 'em to work up an air group? IF the Chinks want to sink massive amounts of money into something we're already experts at killing, that's their perogative.
There are a lot of scary things going on in the PRC, but PLAN naval aviation is probably the least of our problems. I'd be be more worried about the large number of advanced diesel / electric subs they are building or buying, esp. with the decay of our ASW assets.

the Varyag is just a hull though, it's empty, nothing inside, no power plant, no prop, no nothing to make it move. It's not going to go very far without an engine ... (or for that matter, not going to do much anything without an engine supplying the necessary power to various shipborn systems - like ... launching and recovering aircrafts?).

where is the PLAN gonna get that CV power plant and how they gonna drop the engine in without cutting a BIG hole on the side of the ship to fit it in? It'd be like trying to put egg yolk back inside a sealed egg shell.

Granted, nobody really buys the floating casino nonsense, not even the Chinese civilians themselves, who are always in Dailian snapping pics and posting on the Internet and speculating amongst themselves on what's going on with the Varyag. I can see PLAN studying the heck out of the Varyag to learn all they can about carrier construction ...

But turning it into a real operational CV? Can't see it, not even as a practice platform if you can't get the carrier out in the ocean with enough speed and wind to do real carrier ops and that would require ... uh, back to the no engine problem ...

I really have my doubts that China's carriers should be of concern. After all, they are a country that will soon see more shipping traffic than any country in the world (if not already). And it will likely increase in the coming years. Also, they already import more raw materials from around the world than America. And once again, likely to increase in the coming years. It is not unreasonable for them to be nervous about being choked off. So they are building a defense force able to protect the shipping lanes that come in and out of China.

The United States Navy is the most powerful military force the world has ever known. The Chinese will never be able to match us at sea, two Seawolf (or Los Angeles class) subs could destroy their entire operational fleet.