Former US secretary of defense William Perry yesterday cast doubt on the proficiency and capability of a Chinese aircraft carrier program, saying he was more concerned about the People’s Liberation Army’s anti-ship missiles.
Leading a delegation of eight on a visit to Taipei, Perry, co--director of the Preventive Defense Project, a collaborative research effort between Stanford University and Harvard University, spent time with reporters at intervals during his schedule.
Asked to assess the capabilities of the Varyag, China’s first aircraft carrier, which is reportedly to begin a sea trials today, Perry said: “China is very far away from having an operational aircraft carrier.”
China purchased the Soviet-era Varyag from Ukraine in 1998 for US$20 million. Up until recently, the yet-to-be-renamed aircraft carrier was undergoing refurbishing work at Dalian port in Liaoning Province.
“Even the aircraft carrier, it is not important in and of itself. It’s the operation of an aircraft carrier group [that matters]. During the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, we didn’t send two aircraft carriers. We sent two aircraft carrier groups, and that involved many other ships, involved submarines, involved airplanes, and most importantly, it involved years and years of training,” Perry said.
During the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, which saw the largest naval movement by the US in the Asia--Pacific region since the Vietnam War, Perry, then-US secretary of defense, recommended to then-US president Bill Clinton that he dispatch the Nimitz and Independence aircraft carrier battle groups to near the Taiwan Strait.
“Any concern at all we or Taiwan might have on that [China’s aircraft carrier capabilities] is decades in the future, not years in the future, a long time away,” Perry said.
However, this does not mean that progress in China’s modernization of its navy, as evidenced by the completion of the refurbished aircraft carrier, was not a threat, Perry said.
“Some of China’s navy modernization program is very important. We watch it very carefully. My great concern has to do with their ground-to-ship and air-to-ship missiles, not the aircraft carrier. That’s a very remote concern in my mind,” he said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
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