“We’re really entering a new era here,” said Lyle Goldstein, director of Asia engagement at Defense Priorities, a Washington-based think tank.
China was already a significant adversary: It has the world’s largest navy by number of ships, biggest arsenal of ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles, and largest active military service, with a standing army of 2 million soldiers.
But China has lagged the United States in aircraft carrier technology.
Now, the launch of the Fujian will bring Beijing closer to its goal of eroding U.S. maritime primacy in its backyard, not least because the warship uses electromagnetic catapults to launch planes, making China the only country, after the United States, to have developed and built this technology.
“It’s not a small jump,” Goldstein said of the Fujian’s catapults. “It’s literally doubling or tripling—maybe even quadrupling—the combat lethality.”
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