The United States on Friday welcomed China's mention of the carrier, calling it a step toward better transparency between the Pacific powers.
So what did the Chinese say to make us happy?
If we consider our neighbours, India will have three aircraft carriers by 2014 and Japan will have three carriers by 2014," General Luo Yuan, a senior researcher with the Academy of Military Sciences, was quoted as saying by Beijing News.
"So I think the number (for China) should not be less than three so we can defend our rights and our maritime interests effectively."
Saying they want three carriers means nothing more than saying they want to have one deployed at all times. Which means one deployed on station, one preparing to sail, and one recovering after having returned from being on station. The one preparing to sail could be surged fairly quickly in an emergency by rushing preparations, I'd assume.
So this really isn't that transparent, as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps if the Chinese said how many groups of three carriers they plan to build, we can call it transparency.
Of course, if our carriers are just big targets, perhaps we can be grateful that the Chinese are building big targets, too.
