– National Interest – This is not Mao’s China, but…

– South China Morning Post – China’s new aircraft carrier is likely to team up with its sister ship to form a dual-carrier battle group to cut off foreign military access to Taiwan during a war, according to a military magazine and defence specialists.

– South China Morning Post – China’s first home-built aircraft carrier, the Shandong, will focus its mission on the disputed South China Sea and having face-to-face encounters with foreign vessels, state media said on Wednesday.

– South China Morning Post – China’s first home-built aircraft carrier was officially commissioned by President Xi Jinping on Tuesday as Beijing flexed its military muscles.

– Forbes – While the U.S. Navy launches a handful of AEGIS destroyers each year, the single image below of a Shanghai shipyard shows nine newly constructed Chinese warships. China’s Navy, known as the PLAN (People’s Liberation Army Navy), is modernizing at an impressive rate. And on a vast scale.

– Global Times – China is mass-producing special mission aircraft, including anti-submarine aircraft, early warning aircraft, surveillance aircraft and electronic warfare aircraft, a genre of warplanes that Chinese experts said on Sunday will help create a full information system that allows the Chinese military to recognize every hostile movement and even sabotage enemy communications.

– South China Morning Post – The Chinese navy is training fighter pilots experienced in carrier-borne operations to command and manage its warships as it seeks to expand its global naval power.

– South China Morning Post – The Chinese navy is moving ahead with plans to build another aircraft carrier, but plans for a fifth have been put on hold for now, according to military insiders.

– Global Times – The Taihu, a military supply ship, conducted a replenishment docking with civilian container ship Fuzhou in an offshore area in mid-November amid the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) exploration of new ways to replenish ships at sea.

– War Zone – Tethered sensor-laden aerostats are a low-cost way for China to expand its situational awareness in the region and to help defend its island outposts.

– National Interest – James Holmes writes that China is rushing ahead with preparations to ensure it would gain the upper hand in any armed conflict over its territorial claims.

– National Interest – James Holmes writes that in a day’s fighting, then, the Imperial Japanese Navy upended the region’s Sinocentric pecking order. In turn, the Sino-Japanese War set in motion a maritime strategic contest—sometimes peaceful, sometimes not—that persists to this day.

– South China Morning Post – The Chinese navy has joined its Russian and South African counterparts in a joint exercise near Cape Town, expanding its reach to the southern tip of Africa for the first time.

– National Interest – China will deploy a force of aerial drones to stalk American submarines in the Western Pacific.

– Global Times – China’s second aircraft carrier successfully sailed through the Taiwan Straits on Sunday and headed toward a designated area in the South China Sea for testing and training. Experts said that the trip from Northeast China could be the last step in the trial phase of the warship, which is expected to enter naval service, possibly at a naval base in Sanya, South China’s Hainan Province.

– Global Times – The naval wing of the People’s Liberation Army conducted a drill using a civilian ship to supply warships, which is seen as a new approach to facilitate warship supplies in distant waters.

– USNI News – The rapid expansion of China’s Coast Guard gives Beijing the means to shift its sea expansion aims from aspirational to operational.

– South China Morning Post – China’s DF-17 hypersonic boost-glide missile may be powerful enough to penetrate US missile shields in the region, transforming Beijing’s previously defensive strategy of containing independence-leaning forces in the Taiwan Strait.

– National Interest – The Chinese are too clever to get stuck in the Middle East quicksand.

– National Interest – China hopes to get right what Imperial Japan got wrong.

– South China Morning Post – Rear Admiral Ma Weiming is seen as pioneer of electromagnetic aircraft launch system. Experts say Ma’s full membership of Central Committee shows how important sea power is to China’s strategic planning.

– National Interest – Anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles—latter-day counterparts to cannon fired from land—replicate this dynamic from the age of close-range gunnery. James Holmes asks what should the Navy do about it?

– South China Morning Post – The merger would enable China to establish a shipbuilding giant with a combined revenue up to 1 trillion yuan (US$141.5 billion), capable of building vessels ranging from warships, like aircraft carriers, to civilian ships such as container ships and oil tankers.

– National Interest – This edition of Dragon Eye seeks to sketch out the undersea warfare competition in the western Pacific in slightly greater detail, by discussing a new Chinese-language article about China’s new “undersea Great Wall” (水下长城) that appeared in a late 2015 edition of China Ocean News (中国海洋报).

– War on the Rocks – Andrew Erickson writes that to the extent that any nation has a grand strategy, China surely does.