There's always this ever-popular graphic of all the active aircraft carriers in the world:

http://www.floatingpath.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/All-T...

I found a pretty reasonable table of the count of various military bits and pieces by country on Wikipedia [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_level_of_m...

It does amaze me that a colossal nation such as China, with all the manufacturing resources at its disposal, has only one carrier. It almost feels like they haven't even bothered.

Perhaps building such ships would actually harm their international relations because it could be seen as a precursor to aggression.

I suspect because it may be that the days of Carrier supremacy are behind us, much like the days of the Battleship are gone.

A carrier is essentially a single large target that when taken out negates the effectiveness of your opponent. Not sure what its successor is. Probably some form of stealth ship (since that seems to be the focus) armed with smart missiles.

I heard the Chinese were playing around with torpedo/missile hybrids which apparently changed the game since they are apparently impossible/hard to stop. Its a fair assumption that the US has something similar (or is working on it).

There's a lot of speculation that China intends to build several carriers. Their current carrier was purchased as a half-complete carrier from Russia, and towed to China, where it was finished in 10 years. It's almost as though it was a learning exercise. With their first carrier commissioned in only 2012, a second carrier has reportedly been spotted under construction. http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2013/08/those-chinese-a...

Why would they bother? They don't really have any big military goals I can think of that would require a carrier. Carriers are for open warfare with other nation-states, not militants, and that is pretty much off the table from the start these days.

Carriers are for "power projection", not necessarily for warfare with nation-states.

The U.S. has treaty obligations requiring the ability to respond militarily to crises in Europe and Asia and so the requirement to be able to project power is basically enshrined in law. But most other countries want, at most, to be regional hegemons and so don't need a deep carrier capability.

So with that in mind it's still unclear what China plans to do exactly with their carrier. Presumably they will build some more, but they will never put it in combat against the USN (who have ample capability to destroy the carrier aircraft in the skies, and the carrier itself). But it's an awfully expensive fleet to maintain just to piss off Taiwan or Japan.

Carriers are there for an aggressive imperial power that needs to maintain its presence across seas. China doesn't really match that description today.

Carriers are expensive: they imply lots of expensive aircraft, specifically developed just for carrier service, as well as the carrier battle group that trolls around with it.

Plus the logistics pipeline to get fuel and food and such to all that hardware floating around in the ocean.

I have no idea what a carrier costs to operate, but for a normal mega-yacht, it's said to cost about 1/5th original purchase price per year. I'm guessing with the wear and tear on a Navy ship with aircraft banging around on it every few minutes it's something much higher.

Carriers are a relic that have very little to do with modern warfighting.

Except they've been used in most every modern war / police engagement / embargo. Only the most land locked areas or conflicts were neither side (not any interested allies) had a carrier.

That would come as a real surprise to all the people in Afghanistan and Iraq who have been attacked by Carrier Strike Groups in recent years.

What in the world do you mean by "modern warfighting"?

They don't actually "have" a carrier until they have an air wing on it AND enough of the right kinds of ships, supplied with the right armaments, to escort it so it isn't defenseless.

What they have is an incomplete project that's militarily useless for, at least, several more years, maybe a couple decades, if ever.

The Chinese leadership has possibly looked the costly Imperial wars like Iraq, Vietnam, Algeria and Afghanistan for both the USSR & USA and decided that power projection is costly and counterproductive.

Also they might be waiting for UAV launches from nuclear subs. Might be cheaper and about as effective.

Wage silent economic war against an opponent long enough, and you won't have to take on their air carrier groups, awesome air forces, or well trained and equipped armies.

Less explicit, but perhaps more telling:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e...