When China’s first domestically-designed and built aircraft carrier slid into the water last month at a shipyard outside Shanghai, it was seen — at home and abroad — as a symbol of Beijing’s fast-growing military might and ambition to develop a “blue water” navy capable of operating far beyond its own shores.
The Fujian, an 80,000-ton, Type 003 warship named after the Chinese province, was considered a technological leap forward over the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) first two carriers, the Liaoning and the Shandong. The Liaoning had been a Soviet-era carrier purchased from Ukraine in the 1990s while the Shandong, although built in China, was based on the Liaoning model.