China to project power with the new aircraft carrier

China has commissioned its newest aircraft carrier after extensive sea trials, adding a ship that experts say will help the world’s largest navy expand its power far beyond its own waters.

The official Xinhua news agency said the Fujian was commissioned on Wednesday at a naval base on China’s southern Hainan island in a ceremony attended by President Xi Jinping.

Fujian is China’s third carrier and the first to both design and manufacture itself.

This is perhaps the most visible example yet of Xi’s massive military overhaul and expansion, aiming to have a modernized force by 2035 and a “world-class” force by mid-century; many people think this means they could face off against the US.

However, Beijing is taking another step toward closing the gap with the U.S. Navy and its carrier fleet and network of bases that allow it to maintain a presence around the world.

“Carriers are key to the Chinese leadership’s vision of China as a great power with a deep-sea navy,” or a country that can project its power away from coastal waters, said Greg Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

China wants to compete in waters up to Guam.

One of the goals of the Chinese navy is to dominate the nearby waters of the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and the Yellow Sea around the First Island Chain, which extends southward through Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

But Poling said he also wants to be able to contest control of the Second Island Chain, deep in the Pacific where the United States has major military installations in Guam and elsewhere.

“An aircraft carrier won’t do you much good in the First Island Chain, but it is the key to contesting the Americans in the broader Indo-Pacific, if you will,” Poling said.

China’s “increasingly capable military” and ability to “project global power” are reasons why the Pentagon continues to call it “the United States’ only rival with the intent and growing capacity to reshape the international order” in its latest report to Congress.

Song Zhongping, a Hong Kong-based military affairs expert, also said Beijing “has the right to transform its navy into a blue-water strategic navy commensurate with China’s national power.”

“China’s carriers cannot only operate near their country; they must operate in distant oceans and distant seas to carry out various training and support missions,” Song said.

“China is a great power and our overseas interests extend all over the world; we need to have a global presence.”

News of Fujian’s commissioning was greeted with caution in nearby Japan.

Minoru Kihara, a former defense minister and now chief cabinet secretary in Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s new government, said it underlined that China had “comprehensively and rapidly strengthened its military power without transparency.”

“We believe that the Chinese military plans to improve its operational capacity in the far sea and air by strengthening its naval power,” he told reporters.

He emphasized that Japan is monitoring China’s military activities and will “respond calmly but firmly” if necessary.

One possibility causing concern in foreign capitals is a possible Chinese blockade or invasion of the democratically self-governing island of Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory and which leader Xi Jinping has not ruled out seizing by force.

Although the island is located just off the coast of China, if China had the ability to position an aircraft carrier group or groups around the Second Island Chain between Taiwan and the US Pacific Fleet headquarters in Hawaii, this could delay possible American military assistance in the event of a Chinese attack.

“They want these aircraft carriers to play a role in expanding the strategic perimeter further away from China, and one of the important things an aircraft carrier can do is expand China’s range of domain awareness to monitor activities in the air, at sea and under the sea,” said Brian Hart, deputy director of CSIS’s China Power Project.

Thanks to Fujian, China’s warplanes could be deployed far from its coasts.

China’s first aircraft carrier, Liaoning, was Soviet-built and the second, Shandong, was built in China but was based on the Soviet model.

Both use old-school ski jump-type systems to help planes fly.

Fujian bypasses the steam catapult technology used on most American ships to use an electromagnetic launch system found only on the newest U.S. Navy Ford-class carriers.

The system causes less stress on the aircraft and ship, provides more precise control over speed, and can launch aircraft over a wider range than the steam system.

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