China Launches Its First Domestically Built Aircraft Carrier

China has formally commissioned its first home-built aircraft carrier - the Shandong, which is a significant step towards Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambitions to field a world-class navy. In April 2018, speaking at a mass naval parade in the South China Sea Xi said that the People’s Liberation Navy needed to become a “world-class force”. 

During the official launch, Xi himself attended the commissioning ceremony of the ship in the southern province of Hainan. Thus, Shandong finally entered the service as part of the People’s Liberation Navy.

The formal entry of Shandong took place as Xi presented a Chinese flag and a certificate with the ship’s official name to the captain of the ship and political commissar.

The Shandong that uses conventional rather than nuclear propulsion is the second carrier in the Chinese fleet. The first aircraft carrier of China is the Liaoning, which is a retrofitted Soviet-era vessel and was purchased from the Ukrainian government in the year 1998. 

Both the ships, Liaoning and the Shandong has a common feature that is both uses ski-jump style ramps at the end of the flight deck to launch planes from its launchpad, which is comparatively an older technology in comparison to the United States Navy’s preferred ‘catapult’ technology. Catapults can get airborne quickly with greater quantities of fuel and ammunition.

Both of Chinese aircraft carriers, the Shandong and the Liaoning, are named after coastal provinces, which are close to Beijing.

According to visiting fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute, Peter Layton, the Liaoning was used by China to act more as a training vessel, while the Shandong is likely to be deployed in the combat missions, which will thus position China alongside a selected countries with global naval capabilities, such as Russia, France, the US, and the United Kingdom.

The official launch of the domestically built carrier comes only a month after the Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe told his US counterpart Mark Esper, that the US must stop flexing its muscles in the South China Sea. 

In recent years, the naval competition between the two countries has increased amid a sweeping Chinese moderation drive that has witnessed, Beijing launching more submarines, warships, amphibious vessels and auxiliaries since 2014, than the entire serving navies of the world that include, India, Germany, Spain, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. China has the second-largest military budget in the world only next to the US.