Earlier in 2019 it looked like China was moving forward to expand its carrier force by building four steam-powered carriers followed by a larger nuclear-powered class similar to the American ones. At the end of 2019, it was announced that plans had changed. There were numerous problems that contributed to the decision and it meant a smaller Chinese fleet with far fewer carriers.
The most immediate problem was the trade war with the United States. Exports to the U.S. are down 23 percent and devaluation of the yuan (the Chinese currency) means that dollars coming from the U.S. trade is down by nearly 30 percent. Exports to other Western nations are down as well, mainly due to foreign manufacturing operations moving out of China to get away from problems that have little to do with the U.S. trade war. Those dollars are important to pay for oil, which China is the largest importer of. Their growing fleet consumes a lot of oil, but the Chinese economy needs it more. Each carrier is accompanied by up to ten support ships. Half of that is warships but the other half are for “sustainment”, carrying oil and other supplies to keep the carriers going for as long as they are at sea. All those ships burn lots of oil, imported oil.
The second problem is military technology. China expected difficulties developing and implementing all the many technologies needed to effectively operate carrier task forces. Fixing those problems is taking longer than expected. This is especially true with the carriers and aircraft that can operate from them. Most of China’s modern aircraft are illegal copies of Russian designs and efforts to implement lots of stolen American aircraft tech has not gone as smoothly as hoped. There has been a pattern of delays and problems with aircraft tech that have stalled ambitious efforts to develop carrier-based fighters and stealth aircraft. No point in building a lot of carriers is they will be limited or sidelined so often by technical problems.
The third problem is that those carriers and other large warships are meant to defend Chinese claims in the South China Sea and that is proving more expensive than anticipated. Not only do the growing number of artificial island bases have to be supplied by ship but to operate larger ships in the generally shallow South China Sea you have to dredge deeper channels to move those large ships around. This year China canceled another major dredging operation because of cost, especially the oil needed for the dredging ships and support vessels. For now, smaller warships and land-based aircraft will defend Chinese claims in the South China Sea.