China media: Indian aircraft carrier

State media are playing down any potential threat from India’s new aircraft carrier, but urge China to speed up the construction of its own fleet.

China media: Indian aircraft carrier

State media are playing down any potential threat from India’s new aircraft carrier, but urge China to speed up the construction of its own fleet.

India on Monday unveiled its first home-built aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, from a shipyard in southern Kerala state.

“India’s indigenous research and development of submarines and aircraft carriers will still need some time to mature, and the navy’s combat capability also needs to be improved. India still has a long way to go to fulfil its dream of having the ‘world’s second-largest navy’,” concludes the Guangming Daily.

“The shockwaves in China towards the launch of India’s aircraft carrier is smaller than the recent launch of Japan’s quasi-aircraft carrier ‘Izumo’… To the Chinese, Japan is the biggest threat from the periphery, and ordinary Chinese often will not think of India,” says the Global Times.

“There is no arms race between China and India. The main impact on us from the launch of India’s domestic aircraft carrier is that China’s indigenous aircraft carrier plan needs to be accelerated,” it adds.

However, some experts warn that India’s new carrier and submarine could heighten regional tensions.

“The successive high-profile appearances of India’s domestic aircraft carrier and nuclear submarine obviously have a political hand behind them. India’s ambitions not only lie in the Indian Ocean, it even wants to deepen intervention in the South China Sea issue, so as to carry out strategic containment against China,” Zhao Gancheng, director of the Asia-Pacific Research Centre at the Shanghai Institutes of International Studies, tells the Oriental Morning Post.

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Source: BBC.