China debuts aircraft carrier built entirely in that country

China’s new aircraft carrier is transferred from dry dock at a launch ceremony Wednesday at a shipyard in Dalian in northeastern China’s Liaoning province.
China’s new aircraft carrier is transferred from dry dock at a launch ceremony Wednesday at a shipyard in Dalian in northeastern China’s Liaoning province.

BEIJING -- China on Wednesday launched the first aircraft carrier the country has built entirely on its own, in a demonstration of the growing technical sophistication of its defense industries and determination to safeguard its maritime territorial claims and trade routes.

The 50,000-ton carrier was towed from its dockyard Wednesday morning after a ceremony in the northern port city of Dalian, where its predecessor, the Soviet-built Liaoning, underwent extensive refurbishing before being commissioned in 2012.

Development of the new carrier began in 2013, and construction began in late 2015. It's expected to be formally commissioned sometime before 2020, after sea trials and the arrival of its full air complement.

Fan Changlong, vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission and a Communist Party Central Committee member, presided over the launch, which came three days after the anniversary of the People's Liberation Army Navy's symbolic founding in 1949.

Also attending was navy commander Vice Adm. Shen Jinlong, a former commander of the South Sea Fleet responsible for defending China's claim to most of the South China Sea.

Reports of the launch said a bottle of champagne was broken across the ship's bow and that other ships in the port sounded their horns in celebration.

Like the 60,000-ton Liaoning, which was purchased from Ukraine, the new carrier is based on the Soviet Kuznetsov class design, with a ski jump-style flight deck and an oil-fueled steam turbine power plant.

The hull of the new carrier has been completed and its power supply put into place. Next up are mooring tests and the debugging of its electronic systems, China's Defense Ministry said.

China is believed to be planning to build at least two and possibly as many as four additional carriers, with one of them, the Type 002, reported to be under construction at a shipyard outside Shanghai.

They are expected to be closer in size to the U.S. Navy's nuclear-powered 100,000-ton Nimitz class ships, with flat flight decks and catapults to allow planes to launch with more bombs and fuel aboard.

Chinese naval strategists see the carrier program, in addition to its role in protecting China's maritime interests, as being "about having naval power commensurate with China's international status, to impress both external and domestic audiences," said Michael Chase, an expert on the Chinese military at Rand Corp., a U.S. think tank.

The new carrier "is likely to be seen as further evidence of China's desire to become the most powerful and influential country in the region," Chase said. That will be especially worrying to Indian security analysts who are already concerned about Beijing's ambitions in the Indian Ocean, he said.

India -- along with Japan and Taiwan, which also view Chinese carriers as threats -- likely will respond by building new submarines and anti-ship missiles, said Ian Easton, a research Fellow at The Project 2049 Institute in Arlington, Va.

China's "expansionist behavior in the South China Sea and its aggressive efforts to undermine the security of Taiwan and Japan, in particular, have translated into a situation where few countries now trust that Beijing has benign motives," Easton said.

China claims Taiwan as its own territory that can be brought under control by force if necessary, and it was seen as advertising that threat when it sent the Liaoning through the Taiwan Strait earlier this year.

According to Chinese reports, the new carrier will have 24 Shenyang J-15 fighters, based on the Russian Sukhoi Su-33, along with 12 helicopters for anti-submarine warfare and early-warning and rescue operations. That compares with 85-90 fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters carried by a Nimitz-class carrier.

The new carrier is part of an ambitious expansion of the Chinese navy, which is projected to have 265-273 warships, submarines and logistics vessels by 2020, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Naval Analysis. That compares with 275 deployable battle-force ships in the U.S. Navy, China's primary rival in the Asia Pacific.

The U.S. operates 10 aircraft carriers, and it has 62 destroyers to China's 32 and 75 submarines to China's 68. The U.S. Navy has 323,000 personnel to China's 235,000.

China has offered little information about the roles it expects its carriers to play. The Liaoning was initially touted mainly as an experimental and training platform, but in December it was declared to be combat-ready. It has since taken part in live-firing exercises in the South China Sea, where tensions have risen over China's construction of man-made islands complete with airstrips and military structures.

A Section on 04/27/2017

Upcoming Events