It seems China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy is not omnicompetent after all—sleepless efforts at image management notwithstanding. Last week Reuters picked up the story, first broken by the Wall Street Journal, of how a Type 041 Zhou-class nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN), the first in a new generation of PLA Navy attack boats, sank at its berth in Wuchang Shipyard, Wuhan, this May or June.

Water and machinery do not mix well. Sunken vessels have been raised and returned to service before, but doing so takes resources and time. In all likelihood the sinking will set back the Type 041 program back by months if not years, and China’s bluewater aspirations with it. The PLA Navy sagely devoted its early efforts at fleet development to access and area denial. The seaborne component of access denial rode on missile-armed diesel-electric attack submarines and surface patrol craft—ships of war that don’t need nuclear propulsion to reach their offshore patrol grounds, perform picket duty, and return to port.

The navy demoted nuclear-propelled subs to secondary priority until the Chinese Communist leadership gained confidence in its ability to set the terms of entry into the Western Pacific. To all appearances the leadership has now gained that confidence, and has resolved to augment the navy’s current flotilla of six SSNs.

After this spring’s debacle, though, it seems clear Xi Jinping & Co. will have to wait awhile to see their loftier ambitions for undersea warfare fulfilled. In the meantime they have a........

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