A glance at Google Maps is all it takes to identify them in the shipyards. On Changxing Island, at the mouth of the Yangtze, north of Shanghai, the slender bows of frigates and corvettes stand out from those of cargo ships. Some are being assembled on land, others in the water in basins. The rectangular shape of a probable future helicopter carrier also stands out. Not a month goes by without the official press celebrating a newcomer to the Chinese fleet, such as the amphibious assault ship of unprecedented length – 260 meters – launched on December 27, 2024, capable of carrying helicopters and deploying combat drones thanks to an electromagnetic catapult system.
In Chinese, an expression illustrates the frenetic pace at which the country is inaugurating these warships: “like dumplings,” mass-produced in a popular cheap restaurant. This race for production can also be seen upstream, on the banks of the Yangtze, in Wuhan, where submarines are assembled, near the major northeastern ports of Huludao and Dalian, and in Guangzhou in the south, where long barges that would facilitate landing have appeared.
Equipped with 11 aircraft carriers, the US Navy remains the world’s leading fleet in terms of tonnage, but no longer in terms of number of ships: The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) now boasts 370 combat ships, compared with 297 for the United States. China’s military spending in 2023 amounted to $296 billion, or 32% of the $916 billion spent by the US, according to the Stockholm Peace Research Institute – a gap explained by the permanent deployment of US forces around the world. But no other country has embarked on such an effort to challenge US military superiority. China is “the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order, and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so” reads the 2022 National Defense Strategy of The United States of America. The pace of development of the Chinese military represents the Pentagon’s main “challenge.”
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