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Report: China to build 2 carriers by 2015

China plans to begin building two aircraft carriers next year, a Japanese newspaper reported Wednesday, in what would be its first attempt at fixed-wing naval aviation and a potentially major new variable in the strategic calculus of the Pacific.

The two flattops each would be between 50,000 and 60,000 tons, be conventionally powered and patrol the South China Sea, according to the report in Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper, which cited Chinese “shipbuilding sources.” The carriers could be in the fleet by 2015, the story said.

China is one of the world’s largest builders of commercial ships, although its biggest indigenous warship so far has been no more than about 17,000 tons. The Asahi Shimbun reported that the carriers would be built at a new shipyard outside Shanghai and include components already on order from Russia.

A Chinese naval officer told the newspaper that one of the carriers’ primary missions would be to guard the sea lanes that connect energy-ravenous China with oil and mineral resources in the Middle East and Africa.

The story is the latest in a series of reports from around the world about Chinese ambitions to field an aircraft carrier. The official People’s Liberation Army Daily newspaper reported in September that 50 pilots from the Dalian Naval Academy were training for “ship borne aircraft flight.” Official Russian press agencies reported in October that China had purchased as many as 50 Su-33 Flanker-D fighter jets, an updated version of the Su-27K carried aboard Russia’s sole aircraft carrier. Since then, British and American news agencies have quoted top Chinese officials as expressing great interest in seaborne airpower.

“The Chinese government would seriously consider ‘relevant issues’ with “factors in every aspects” on building its first ever aircraft carrier, said navy spokesman Huang Xueping,” according to a Dec. 23 report by the official Xinhua news agency. “China has a long coastline and the sacred duty of China’s armed forces is to safeguard the country’s marine safety and sovereignty over coastal areas and territorial seas,” he said.

China’s carriers — if the Japanese report is accurate — would likely be comparable to the Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth-class ships, now just beginning construction. Slightly larger, at 65,000 tons, the Queen Elizabeth is designed for a complement of around 1,400 sailors, including its ship’s company and air wing, and designed to carry about 40 strike aircraft, plus additional helicopters, according to “Combat Fleets of the World.”

Because the Chinese carriers are smaller and shorter-ranged than their American counterparts, the U.S. shouldn’t view them as a threat, the Chinese naval official told the Asahi Shimbun.