In 1986, the U.S. Navy had replaced the Royal Navy as Number One Fleet, and badly outgunned the Soviets, but the Soviet Navy still posed a significant challenge to Western dominance of the seas.

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In 1988, after the Toshiba Machine Company transferred such tools to the USSR enabling the Soviet navy to fabricate vastly improved submarine propellers, Congress enacted legislation that would both prohibit imports into the United States of products manufactured by companies violating COCOM rules and bar such firms from awards of U.S. government contracts.

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But unlike two other ex-Soviet carriers in China that ended up as theme parks, this one was taken to a navy shipyard where, in 2005, it got a telltale coat of Chinese military paint.

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