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Former HK chef in bold bid for British aircraft carrier
Warship wanted as floating international school in Zhuhai
Niall Fraser, Greg Torode and Minnie Chan
Jan 07, 2011
Kinda lol, but it is a creative business idea. It also serves as a great symbol.
Former HK chef in bold bid for British aircraft carrier
Warship wanted as floating international school in Zhuhai
Niall Fraser, Greg Torode and Minnie Chan
Jan 07, 2011
A UK-based Hong Kong businessman has made an audacious bid to buy one of Britain's most famous aircraft carriers - HMS Invincible - which he plans to tow to China and convert into an international school.
Chef-turned-entrepreneur Lam Kin-bong, who is also a Zhuhai lawmaker, has offered £5 million (HK$60 million) for the 30-year-old, 200-metre long carrier, which is being sold in an internet auction by Britain's Ministry of Defence through the UK government's Disposal Services Authority.
The Invincible - which played a key role in Britain's war against Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982 - is being sold off as part of the UK's military restructuring plans and comes at a time when China is known to be working towards building its first aircraft carrier.
However, Zhuhai-born Lam, 48, who runs a chain of Chinese restaurants in the West Midlands of England, says the purchase - done through his Zhuhai-based company Sunway Yacht Limited - is purely commercial.
Military analysts are scrutinising the deal but say the stripped-out hulk of the Invincible would be of little value to China's advancing carrier programme.
If he wins the auction, for which bids closed on Wednesday, Lam says he wants to tow the vessel to Zhuhai and berth it at a marina he is building at the city's Lovers' Promenade, a project he says is due for completion within a year.
"My intentions are purely commercial and have nothing to do with the military. We are building a marina in Zhuhai and if my bid is successful our first option is to berth the carrier there and convert it into an international school to help foster communication and cultural ties between China and Britain," Lam told the South China Morning Post (SEHK: 0583, announcements, news) .
He said it would cost £11 million to buy the Invincible, tow it to China and convert it.
"My second option - if I can't take it to China - would be to berth the Invincible in Liverpool and make it into a school to boost the understanding of China and the Chinese in Britain."
Lam said he had spoken to the Chinese Embassy in London about the bid and received a supportive response. Lam left Zhuhai for Hong Kong when he was 15 and lived in Sha Tin, where he trained and worked as a chef before moving to London when he was 30.
He then moved to Birmingham and helped set up the Wing Wah chain of restaurants, which he runs with his wife, Dorian Chan, who was brought up in Wan Chai. The couple have business interests in Zhuhai and property investments in Hong Kong. Lam is chairman of the Zhuhai Co-operative Association in the UK.
His restaurants are popular with Chinese officials visiting Britain.
Gary Li, a PLA specialist at the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies, said he was puzzled by the bid, saying the Invincible offered little China needed for its carrier programme.
As a sell-off to civilians, the ship would be stripped of anything remotely useful militarily and would almost certainly come without all important blueprints.
"The Invincible is relatively small, an old design and is built to serve the Harrier jump-jet - it is really hard to see the value beyond the scrap iron in this deal for the Chinese," Li said.
"Even if they wanted to rebuild it and use it as an extra training platform, that would be a real money pit - and even then it would not serve their purposes. What it may point to is the absolute obsession with aircraft carriers among not just the Chinese government, but civilians as well."
Asian and Western military attaches are following developments closely and also expressed surprise at the deal.
"We're not sure really what is behind it, or why China would want it at this point in their domestic programme," one Asian diplomat said. "They need hard operational experience and good engine designs, both for their future carriers and planes, and a hulk of British scrap will not help them very much."
PLA naval engineers have spent the last decade re-fitting the Soviet-designed Varyag carrier, bought partially completed from a shipyard in Ukraine for US$20 million in 1998. The PLA paid extra for blueprints.
The rusting hulk, first purchased privately, was towed to China via Macau, prompting early speculation that it might be used for a casino.
US military officials said they expected to see the Varyag in operation for training by 2012 - China's first operational aircraft carrier. It is expected to be used to train naval pilots at sea for later deployment on domestic-built carriers China is planning to have operational by 2020.
A full-scale concrete replica of its flight deck and superstructure was built at a technical school near Wuhan , Hubei province, over the past year.
At 66,000-tonnes, the Varyag dwarfs the 22,000-tonne Invincible. While they both use a jump ramp rather than catapaults to get planes airborne, the Varyag was designed to use planes similar to those China is developing based on Russian-technology.
A spokeswoman for Britain's Ministry of Defence declined to give details of the bidding process but said the vessel would be stripped of all its components before being sold. "In effect, whoever buys equipment like this is buying a shell," she said.
Another mainland military expert said the Invincible was of little military value. "It cannot compare with Varyag because the HMS Invincible has been stripped bare. Varyag is a semi-completed product and is newer," said Song Xiaojun , a Beijing-based naval expert.
However, Song said the bid had symbolic and historic importance.
"If Mr Lam could win the bid and take the aircraft carrier to Zhuhai, it will serve as a symbol of the rise of China. It's a dramatic change that the United Kingdom - the former colonial master of Hong Kong who forcibly took Hong Kong from China with its powerful navy, defeated the Qing dynasty and sold the Chinese people opium, now has to sell its warship to China to help it cope with financial difficulties."
Shanghai-based military expert Ni Lexiong said: "The British will just hand over a shell to Mr Lam, if he wins the bid. I don't think London is interested in helping China's aircraft carrier project. On the other hand, the incident shows that the world's centre of conflicts is shifting from Europe to Asia, where you see many new countries interested in acquiring aircraft carriers."
Kinda lol, but it is a creative business idea. It also serves as a great symbol.
