Study: The balance of power is shifting, China already has more warships than the US.

It was a wonderful day for Chinese President Xi Jinping, China’s second-most powerful leader after Mao Zedong, to turn his ambitious plans into reality – a power before his eyes that will show the greatness and glory of China in the seven oceans of the world. world.

“The task of building a powerful fleet has never been more important and urgent than now,” the Chinese president said that day.

At the time, China was conducting the largest shipbuilding campaign the world has ever seen. In 2015, Xi Jinping embarked on an ambitious project to turn China’s armed forces into a world-class fighting force capable of competing with the United States. The president has ordered increased investment in shipyards and new technologies, and it continues to this day. In at least one respect, Xi Jinping’s plan worked. From 2015 until now, China has managed to mobilize the world’s largest naval forces. And now it is doing everything possible to consolidate its position further from its shores.

In 2015, the Chinese Navy had 255 warships in its fleet. At least that’s what the US Navy Intelligence Service said.

By the end of 2020, that number was 360, which means the Chinese are outnumbering the US military by more than 60 ships. In four years, China will have more than 400 warships, experts predict.

In 2000, the figures were quite different.

“The power of the Chinese navy has tripled in just the past two decades,” a report by the US Navy, Marines and Coast Guard commanders said in December.

“China is already leading the world’s largest naval force, but it is not doing enough: it continues to build state-of-the-art combat vehicles, submarines, aircraft carriers, fighter jets, amphibious assault ships, nuclear ballistic missile submarines, coast guards already alarming speeds. “, – states in the document prepared.

Some will match or even exceed the solutions available to the United States or other world powers.

“The plan is not to use scrap from China’s shipbuilding industry, but more modern and powerful ships,” wrote Professor Andrew Ercixon, a Chinese expert at the US Navy College, in February last year.

These include Type 055 warships (some experts say they are outnumbered by American Ticonderoga cruisers in firing power) – amphibious assault ships capable of transporting thousands of Chinese troops to foreign shores.

What is the situation in the United States?

While China expects to have more than 400 ships by 2025, based on the current US Navy shipbuilding plan, which does not specify any specific timeline, the target is 355 ships, which is a significant quantitative difference.

That certainly does not mean that the greatness of the American fleet is a thing of the past.

If we count the soldiers, the US Navy is larger and serves more than 330,000. soldiers. For comparison: the Chinese fleet serves 250 thousand. soldiers.

Analysts cite several more factors in Washington’s favor.

The American fleet still has a higher tonnage: larger and heavier armed ships. In this sense, the Americans are definitely ahead of the Chinese. These ships provide Washington with the supremacy of missile power.

The United States has more than 9,000 on its surface vessels. Vertical launch missile chambers. Beijing has only about 1,000, says Nick Childs, a defense analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The US fleet of fifty submarine attack ships is nuclear, meaning it has an advantage in distance and endurance over the Chinese fleet (of the 62 submarine fleets, only seven are nuclear-powered).

Closer to its shores, the figures are on the side of Beijing.

The Chinese can boast that they have the biggest advantage over the Americans in terms of patrol and coast guard, Childs says. The smaller ships are supplemented by Chinese coastguards and paramilitary formations. Together, all the ships nearly double the total power of China’s navy. This is a considerable headache for Washington, especially since the country’s budget and the problems of the pandemic are also ahead of China. Analysts say loud statements like the recent Beijing report that the annual defense budget will grow by 6.8 percent are a serious red flag for Washington.

The United States is forming a four-nation alliance to stop China

US President Joe Biden will hold his first quadripartite summit with leaders in Australia, India and Japan on Friday, stepping up efforts to strengthen alliances amid growing concerns about a rising China.

As diplomacy intensified, Japan announced that Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga would become the first foreign leader to meet with Biden in person. This shows that allies are very important to the new American leader.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will also visit Japan and South Korea together next week, and L. Austin has yet to go to India. This will be your first trip abroad.

Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet with senior Chinese officials next week in Alaska. The Biden administration promises that meeting will directly expose America’s concerns.

Friday’s quadripartite summit, though virtual, marks the first meeting of leaders from the United States, Japan, India and Australia in more than a decade, with meetings of lower-ranking officials from the so-called Quartet.

The summit takes place as a result of the deterioration of relations between the four democracies and China. China had serious clashes with Indian forces in the Himalayan region last year, intensifying operations near the Japanese-administered islands and imposing sanctions on Australian products after a series of disputes.

However, the Biden administration has tried not to clearly link the Quartet to China, and this marks a change in rhetoric following statements condemned by former President Donald Trump about Beijing.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said the Quartet was not focusing “on a single issue, including China.”

“We are talking about the common interest in defending universal values ​​and rights. We are talking about common economic interests. We are talking about common security interests. “We have close person-to-person contacts with all of these countries,” Price said.

“That’s what the Quartet is,” he added.