U.S. Defense Secretary Hagel gets Aircraft Carrier Tour on First Visit to China

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will get a rare tour of China’s first aircraft carrier a day after warning the Communist Party-led nation not to use coercion to settle territorial disputes with its neighbors.

Hagel will be the first foreign visitor to get such access to China’s aircraft carrier, according to a senior U.S. defense official. The ship, Liaoning, is based at Qingdao naval base.

A day before leaving for China, Hagel met in Tokyo with his Japanese counterpart Itsunori Onodera to assure him that the U.S. would stand by him if China forcefully grabbed Japanese-controlled islands in the East China Sea claimed by China. He linked Russia’s annexation of Crimea to the island dispute.

“You cannot go around the world and redefine boundaries and violate territorial integrity and sovereignty of nations by force, coercion and intimidation, whether it’s in small islands in the Pacific, or large nations in Europe,” Hagel said while in Japan. Hagel called China a “great power” and said that with such power “comes new and wider responsibilities as to how you use that power.”

Hagel leaves Tokyo today for China, his first visit there since becoming U.S. defense secretary last year. He is arriving in Qingdao, southeast of Beijing and home to China’s North Sea fleet on the East China Sea. Later, he goes to Beijing for two days of meetings with his counterpart and other Chinese officials. Hagel’s visit to the aircraft carrier was closed off to U.S. news media traveling with him.

Aircraft Carrier China built its Liaoning aircraft carrier from an unfinished Soviet-era hull and commissioned the ship in September 2012.

The ship has undergone sea trials and the People’s Liberation Army has landed its J-15 aircraft on the carrier deck.

China is building up its navy as President Xi Jinping seeks to position his country as a maritime power. China’s second aircraft carrier will be completed in 2018, the South China Morning Post reported Jan. 19, citing a regional Communist Party chief. Liaoning is some way from combat-readiness, General Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, commander of U.S. air forces in the Pacific, said Feb 9.

In November as Liaoning was deployed to the South China Sea area, China unilaterally declared an air defense zone over parts of the airspace used by South Korea and Japan. In December, the U.S. Navy’s guided-missile cruiser USS Cowpens got too close to Liaoning in the South China Sea, according to China’s Global Times newspaper.

“America is clearly right up against the front door of China,” the Global Times said in its editorial. “The American ship coming close to the Liaoning for reconnaissance is already not ‘innocent passage’ — it is already a threat to China’s national security.”