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China launched its largest and most modern aircraft carrier on Friday, according to state-run CCTV, the first internally designed and built ship of its kind and a symbol of the country’s expanding military power.
At a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai, officials unveiled the Type 003 warship Fujian, which officials say will not be ready for battle for five years, officials say. a stage in Beijing’s ambitions to develop a blue-water fleet capable of projecting power far beyond its shores.
The carrier is in the center of intense interest among military observers and rival nations monitoring the development of China’s navy. The first two Chinese carriers include an upgrade of an old Soviet model, the Liaoning, purchased from Ukraine in 1998, and Shandong, which was built in China but based on the Liaoning model and commissioned in 2019.
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It is the first Chinese carrier to be equipped with an electromagnetic catapult to launch aircraft, including those with higher payloads, faster and more efficiently. The technology skips the ski jump configuration to launch jets over a ramp at the end of the track used by the other two Chinese carriers.
“Fujian brings a whole new level of mass ability compared to Liaoning and Shandong,” said Colin Co., a naval expert at the People’s Liberation Army at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
While Chinese military analysts and blogs hailed the carrier as the “Chinese response to the USS Gerald R. Ford,” launched in 2017, much of its capabilities are still unknown. Ford was the largest and most modern carrier in the world when it was built.
“There is extremely scarce information about Fujian and, in this regard, about the PLA Navy’s carrier program. The exact abilities and their performance are shrouded in great secrecy, “Koch said, referring to the People’s Liberation Army.
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The launch of China’s most modern carrier comes amid heightened tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, where China and its neighbors have competing territorial claims. The recent signing of a security agreement between China and the Solomon Islands and the opening of a naval facility in Cambodia have raised further concerns about Beijing reaching the Gulf of Thailand and the South Pacific.
The carrier is named after the Chinese province against Taiwan.
Lyric Li in Seoul and Vic Chiang in Taipei contributed to this report.
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