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The PLAN's first aircraft carrier, Liaoning, will be the blueprint for future ships that will be used to create contiguous offshore air defence networks. Source: PA
Analysts with insight into the planning of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) state that the series of aircraft carriers the service intends to build will be used in different, but potentially provocative, operational roles. Rather than being used for power projection missions in the manner of US Navy carrier battle groups, the carriers will instead be inserted into regions where Beijing feels compelled to buttress its territorial and economic interests.
Most obviously these include the disputed territorial waters of the East and South China Seas. In these scenarios the carriers would be used as floating aerodromes and used to fill in gaps between China's artificially constructed islands to create a contiguous air defence network.
A secondary role would be to protect Chinese overseas interests, particularly some of Beijing's new far-flung military commitments. In November 2015 China announced that it would build it first overseas naval installation in the East African nation of Djibouti.
PLAN Rear Admiral Yin Zhuo, a former national security adviser to the Chinese political leadership who also sits on the naval forces' cyber security advisory board, told the state-run Xinhua News Agency on 3 March that a force of several carriers is a logical step, given the growing number of China's overseas interests and investments, along with the need to protect the rights of overseas ethnic Chinese.
"Protecting the economic and political status and occupational safety of overseas Chinese is paramount to safeguarding China's domestic economic development and its reform and opening up," he said. According to Beijing's official statistics China has major investments in 155 nations with approximately 120 million of its own citizens travelling abroad annually.
However, Adm Yin pointed out that these aircraft carriers would be used in a defensive posture and not in offensive operations designed to invade or intimidate its neighbours.
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http://www.janes.com/article/58528/analysts-examine-role-of-china-s-future-carrier-force
