It’s an epic saga made for Hollywood: the long, strange odyssey of China’s highest-profile weapons acquisition in decades — the aircraft carrier Liaoning, née Varyag — from unfinished Soviet navy hulk purchased in 1998 to operational warship plying the Asian seas. Named after a Chinese province, China’s only aircraft carrier debuted in 2012 to great fanfare. It’s far from unusual for weapons development to take years in the making. But it’s not every day that a private citizen buys a major warship, donates it to the navy, and sees it become the pride of fleet and nation. Happy ending, right?
Not …read more
Source: Foreign Policy
