This is John Bachelor, conversation with my colleague Gordon Chang and our colleague Jim Finel,

United States Navy retired intelligence officer in the Pacific Fleet,

about the Fujian, a new aircraft carrier launched by the People's Republic of China's PLA Navy.

And the rumor that the PLA was demonstrating its might sailing near the Philippines to remind the

Philippines that it's wavering from obeisance to Beijing to cooperation with

Tokyo and the Washington was unwise given the strength of the PLA Navy.

Jim Finel, who is very familiar with sea duty, has a completely different explanation for why the Fujian was out on sea trials on May 1st

and what that actually means.

Here's Jim Finel on the Fujian boasting that it's almighty and boasting so that the Philippines

will back off.

The full explanation is less than threatening.

Jim Finel, US and retire.

More of this later.

But more than likely for me,

the fact that they started the sea trails on one May day,

which is a big day in communism, is more likely the reason that they did it for

internal consumption in China.

But there's no doubt that the fact that it's out there or was out there this past week during these tensions with the Philippines and the South China Sea and all this talk about the gentleman's agreement and allegedly a recording now that the Chinese have of the conversation

with the Philippines is all part of this drama that as you just said it continues to go on

so there's probably somebody in China that's saying

let's put this rumor out that we also launched around this time so that we could

show the Filipinos that we can come down and thump them but the Fujian itself right now is not capable of thumping anybody.

...