Well, it makes sense really, the Chinese want to be able to exert the same sort of military power in the western pacific that the US exerts in the entire pacific.
Namely the Chinese want a sword to be able to hang over Taiwan, not that they'll actually want to invade Taiwan, because that would wreck the place and ruin the whole point of taking it, but they want to be able to put themselves in a position where they can credibly threaten Taiwan with invasion to the point that Taiwan would have little choice but to back down (not that Taiwan actually would) and also to have the power to push back against other nations territorial claims, nations such as South Korea, Japan and the Philippines.
Now, Chinas current weaponry is primarily defensive, since although it can (in theory) target US carriers, it has nothing to replace the US dominance on the water with, aside from one, old, second hand aircraft carrier.
By 2022 they should have about three carriers in the style of the Liaoning (I prefer the Admiral Shi Lang, which was what they were originally going to call the Liaoning), with plans to build other home-grown designs by the mid-2020s. The US has 19 carriers, 19 vs 3 is a number that even the most die-hard Communist Admiral is going to flinch at, and with Japan slowly remilitarising, I wouldn't worry too much about the US in the Pacific until the mid 2030s. Then the hegemony will be challenged, and by that time it will have been almost a century of unchallenged US dominance in the Pacific.
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