China’s Navy Now Outnumbers U.S. Fleet With 370-Plus Warships

The Chinese Navy is now the largest in the world by hull count by a wide margin, with more than 370 warships compared with the United States Navy’s 291, the International Business Times wrote on September 2.

The Chinese force, known as the People’s Liberation Army Navy (plan), has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent decades, and not just in sheer numbers. Its vessels now include more than 140 major surface combatants, some 55 attack submarines and 3 operational aircraft carriers, with a fourth under construction. Many of these ships are armed with sophisticated long-range missiles capable of striking enemy vessels, aircraft and land targets. This gives China a formidable force for projecting power and keeping U.S. forces at bay in the Western Pacific.

“The People’s Liberation Army Navy has moved well beyond a coastal defense force focused primarily on protecting China’s shoreline,” the article states.

As China has built up its Navy, America has shrunk its own fleet. In 1987, the U.S. Navy had 594 active warships as the Reagan administration pursued a goal of 600 vessels. After the Cold War ended, America abandoned that buildup and spent the next four decades shrinking its fleet. Today, nearly four decades later, America’s fleet has fallen to less than half its size in the late 1980s.

Despite occasional calls in Congress and the White House to rebuild American sea power, the U.S. fleet continues to shrink.

Of course, not all warships are created equal. China’s fleet is larger by number of vessels, but the U.S. Navy still has a significant advantage in overall size and tonnage. The American fleet today displaces roughly 4.5 million tons, compared with an estimated 2 to 2.5 million tons for the Chinese fleet. The difference reflects the composition of the two navies: The U.S. fleet includes 11 enormous nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and a large number of other massive, heavily armed, oceangoing warships, while China has built its numbers partly through large quantities of smaller vessels.

But the more important question is what happens in the event of a war. China possesses by far the world’s largest shipbuilding industry, with a construction capacity that the U.S. cannot begin to match. An analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates China’s overall shipbuilding capacity is now roughly 230 times greater than America’s.

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That alarming figure does not mean China can build advanced warships 230 times faster than the United States. America retains specialized capabilities that are not captured by this measure. But it illustrates the enormous industrial advantage China has built and could draw upon to quickly expand its fleet or replace losses in a prolonged conflict.

And consider this history: Just after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Imperial Navy was a formidable force, with total naval tonnage equal to roughly three quarters of the U.S. Navy. But America had a shipbuilding capacity at least three times greater than Japan’s, which enabled it to build new ships on an enormous scale to replace its losses and expand its fleet as the war dragged on. By the end of 1943, American combat tonnage had grown from just over 1 million tons to nearly 2.5 million. Japan simply could not keep pace—and that growing disparity was a major factor in its ultimate defeat. The lesson of World War ii is that the fleet you have today matters—but so does the fleet you can build tomorrow.

With China’s shipbuilding capacity today hundreds of times greater than America’s, the prospect of a prolonged conflict between the two nations is unsettling.

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has warned about the growing gap between Chinese and American naval power, particularly in connection with control of the vital South China Sea.

In a July 2016 Trumpet article, he wrote:

[T]he American military is retreating, and other great powers are coming in to fill the vacuum. … China is intimidating the nations of Southeast Asia into submission to its will. … Everything is headed in the direction of war.

Mr. Flurry explained that his understanding of this dynamic is based on Bible prophecy. In Deuteronomy 28:52, God tells “Israel” that if its people refuse to turn to Him, He will transfer control over the world’s strategic sea gates to their enemies. Mr. Flurry explained that this is “a prophecy for the modern-day descendants of Israel,” which mainly means America and Britain.

In recent years, China’s growing naval power and America’s global retreat have seen the Chinese take control of much of the South China Sea and many of the sea gates that allow access to it. It is happening in locations that just a few short years ago were under the control of the United States and Britain, which shows that the prophecy in Deuteronomy is in the process of being fulfilled.

China’s rising naval power and the widening disparity between Chinese and American sea power could accelerate the fulfillment of these prophecies. To better understand the prophetic significance of China’s rise, order our free booklet Russia and China in Prophecy.