Hagel will be first foreign dignitary to visit China’s only carrier

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is expected to get the first tour for a foreign visitor of China’s only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, when he arrives in Beijing Monday from a visit to Japan. Hagel is currently on a 10-country swing around the Far East in a bid to counter China’s expanding military push. In Tokyo, he told reporters that China must better respect its neighbors – an allusion to the territorial Chinese-Japanese dispute over islands in the East China Sea. DEBKAfile: The West is not clear about when the Liaoning, a refurbished Soviet-era carrier, is scheduled to go into full operational service after its first trials in the South China Sea in February.