In April, on the 69th anniversary of the founding of China’s navy, the country’s first domestically built aircraft carrier stirred from its berth in the port city of Dalian on the Bohai Sea, tethered to tugboats for a test of its seaworthiness. “China’s first homegrown aircraft carrier just moved a bit, and the United States, Japan and India squirmed,” a military news website crowed, referring to the three nations China
views as its main rivals. Not long ago, such boasts would have been dismissed as the bravado of a second-string military. No longer. A modernization program focused on naval and missile forces has shifted the balance of power in the Pacific in ways the United States and its allies are only beginning to digest. While China lags in projecting firepower on a global scale, it can now challenge U.S. military supremacy in the places that matter most to it: the waters around Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea. READ MORE