China has commissioned its latest aircraft carrier after extensive sea trials, State media reported Friday, adding a ship that experts say will help what is already the world’s largest navy expand its power farther beyond its own waters. The official Xinhua news agency said the Fujian had been commissioned on Wednesday at a naval base on southern China’s Hainan island in a ceremony attended by top leader Xi Jinping.
The Fujian is China’s third carrier and the first that it both designed and built itself. It is perhaps the most visible example so far of Xi’s massive military overhaul and expansion that aims to have a modernised force by 2035 and one that is “world class” by mid-century, which most take to mean capable of going toe-to-toe with the United States. With it, Beijing takes another step toward closing the gap with the US Navy and its carrier fleet and network of bases that allow it to maintain a presence around the world.
“Carriers are key to Chinese leadership’s vision of China as a great power with a blue-water navy,” or one that can project power far from its coastal waters, said Greg Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. For China’s navy, one goal is to dominate the near waters of the South China Sea, East China Sea and Yellow Sea around the so-called First Island Chain, which runs south through Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines.
