A senior Chinese military officer said if China acquires an aircraft carrier or two, it will merely be to protect the Chinese homeland, not to project power across the globe, according to news reports.

U.S. Department of Defense leaders already are demanding to know why China is acquiring strategic, long-range military hardware, and China isn’t supplying them with answers they find credible. Chinese figures, for example, have said these long-range assets are being purchased to guard the Chinese coastline, or for an eventual invasion of Taiwan (which is but 100 miles from the Chinese mainland), or to guard sea lanes already guarded by the U.S. Navy.

Chinese Maj. Gen. Quan Lihua said in an interview that any great power would want aircraft carriers, and a Chinese move to acquire them shouldn’t be viewed with alarm by the United States, according to the The Financial Times of London. He didn’t say flatly, however, that China is going to create aircraft carrier groups. China already possesses some old unused carriers.

His comments come after China has embarked upon a decade-long spree of buying and building cutting-edge arms, including:

• The Jin Class submarines, which are nuclear powered, with limitless range, and carry nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles with a range of almost 5,000 miles
• Long-range bombers
• Intercontinental ballistic missiles based in China that could strike targets in the United States
• Russian Sovremenny destroyers
• Some 1,400 short- and medium-range missiles pointed toward Taiwan
• Advanced fighter aircraft

As well, China has proven it can take down satellites in orbit with ground-based interceptor missiles, and it also disabled a U.S. military satellite with a ground-base laser. On a more peaceful note, China has a space program: it is just the third nation able to send humans to space, with its taikonauts now able to perform spacewalks. China has sent unmanned craft to lunar orbit, and will place humans on the moon in the next decade.

Further, China has developed a cadre of cyber warriors who can hack into computers around the world to cause havoc.

China is financing this huge military buildup in part with money it receives from selling goods to the United States. The U.S. trade deficit with China is running well more than $200 billion yearly.

Meanwhile, however, a Rand Corporation study says the United States still has primacy in naval power in Asian waters, despite the rise of China.