China may have effective aircraft carriers by 2030 - PANIC

I was mildly intrigued by this story - Russia has agreed to sell China naval jet fighters - the SU-33. The SU-33 compares favorably with the F-18, and the F-14 is being retired, which basically leaves the US Navy's variant of the Joint Strike Fighter to compete with. Of course, the reality is that both the JSF and the Air Force's F-22 are extremely powerful aircraft, and I can't shake my suspicions of the quality of Russian design and manufacture.

What's far more interesting to me, in this story, is that China seems to be moving away from the policy it's pursued thus far: not mirroring US abilities, but countering them asymmetrically. It's far more expensive to build aircraft carriers than to build missiles capable of sinking aircraft carriers, and so far China seemed to be playing a strong hand by developing cheaper technologies to lessen America's inherent technological advantages.

I wonder if someone in the PLAN has been reading Mahan...