There's some stuff that this article ought to have covered: -The ship was bought, relatively cheaply ($20million USD), from Ukraine, 60% completed. -At the ti

There's some stuff that this article ought to have covered: -The ship was bought, relatively cheaply ($20million USD), from Ukraine, 60% completed. -At the time of purchase, the ship had no engines. To the best of my knowledge, we don't know what types of engines China put into it, but it was never designed to be driven by nuclear reactors. This is a huge gap in comparing capabilities (since US carriers use nuclear reactors(and they may be the only ones, though don't quote me on that)). -Construction began in 1985. -In 2015, the USS Gerald R. Ford is expected to enter service. This is a new class of carrier (the Gerald R. Ford class) which will slowly take over the Nimitz class. One way to look at this is that the US is a generation ahead. If you are going to compare a yet-operational ship, it wouldn't be a horrible idea to compare it to another yet-optional ship, Finally, as others have mentioned, carriers are only good at projecting power against inferior forces. They represent a target of opportunity otherwise. They can be destroyed for a fraction of the cost it takes to build them. Russia's approach during the cold war was to build supersonic cruise missiles. Now countries are developing hypersonic cruise missiles. They certainly serve a purpose, but only to a point. If ever the US has to leverage all of its 11 carriers at once, than we should all run for the hill (and the least safe place to be probably is on those carriers).