The People’s Liberation Army Navy has added more ships to its fleet in the past twenty years than most countries have in their entire navies. By hull count, the PLAN is now the largest navy in the world, surpassing the United States Navy in number of surface combatants and submarines. The comparison requires qualification — American vessels are generally larger, more capable on a per-unit basis, and operated by more experienced crews in a navy with a longer tradition of sustained blue-water operations. But the qualification should not obscure the fundamental shift: China has built a navy capable of contesting American naval supremacy in the western Pacific, and it has done so on a timeline that surprised most Western defense analysts.