This submarine is very powerful, but why did Beijing only order one?
Key point: Perhaps the single Qing-class submarine was a testbed for technologies and engineering? Or perhaps the boat was simply too expensive for Beijing to justify buying more.
In 2010, China’s first and only, so far Qing-class submarine sailed out to sea following nearly six years of construction. Displacing 6,628 tons submerged and measuring exactly the length of a football field at one hundred yards long (ninety-two meters), it is by most accounts the largest diesel submarine ever built.
Unlike the vast majority of diesel submarines, the Type 032 can fire not only long-range cruise missiles, but submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with the capacity to send a nuclear warhead across the ocean.