Beijing: China today said it was "seriously considering" building its first aircraft carrier, in a sign that indicates Beijing is proposing to expand its Navy to give it a blue water capability.

An aircraft carrier is "a reflection of a nation s comprehensive power", the country's National Defence spokesman Col Huang Xueping said asserting that such weapons platform were needed to meet the demands of a country's Navy. Chinese government would seriously consider "relevant issues" with "factors in every aspects" on building its first ever aircraft carrier, Xueping was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua news agency.

Though he did not give a time frame for building the carrier or whether the carrier would be conventional or nuclear powered, the Chinese plans come in the wake of the country having recently built advanced nuclear submarines. The Chinese Navy is almost shore based and deployed in defensive mode, but recently the Communist nation has announced dispatching a Naval flotilla to Indian ocean to deter pirate attacks on Chinese vessels in the Gulf of Aden.

An aircraft carrier would allow Chinese Navy to cover wide expanses of oceans which presently are out of reach of its shore based Air Force. In 1985, China purchased an Australian carrier HMAS Melbourne. Although the hull was scrapped, Chinese technicians studied the ship and built a replica of its flight deck for pilot training. Beijing purchased two former Soviet carriers the Minsk in 1998 and the Kiev in 2000. Neither carrier was made operational; instead, they were used as floating military theme parks. Nevertheless, both provided design information to China s Navy engineers.

Source : PTI