China’s second aircraft carrier likely to be based near S China Sea
BEIJING — China’s first home-made aircraft carrier is likely to be based somewhere near the South China Sea to handle “complicated situations”, mainland media has reported.
Beijing has yet to officially announce the base of China’s second aircraft carrier. The first carrier, the Liaoning, is based in Qingdao, a port in the north that is close to Japan and South Korea.
An aircraft carrier base in the southern part of China’s coast is likely to enhance the nation’s military capability in the South China Sea, where China is building up artificial islands and stirring up tensions with Washington.
The country’s second carrier is likely to be named the Shandong, after the province on China’s east coast, according to an article posted yesterday on Xiake Dao, a social media account affiliated with the overseas edition of the People’s Daily.
The article said that “based on existing available information”, the Chinese navy’s second aircraft carrier base would be in a southern province.
“It will be used to tackle the complicated situations in the South China Sea. The aircraft carrier will probably be based there,” the article said.
The Liaoning, which was bought and brought from Ukraine in 1998 and later refitted and renamed after the nation’s northeastern province, was part of the navy fleet conducting drills in the South China Sea in December.
On Tuesday, a television network in Shandong reported that the aircraft carrier was “taking shape” after two years and nine months of construction, but it did not provide further details, such as when the carrier would be completed. Various Chinese media reports have suggested that the carrier was expected to be completed in the first half of 2017 and would officially join the navy in 2019.
The Defence Ministry had earlier said that it was being built in the northeastern port of Dalian, at the same shipyard that refurbished the country’s first aircraft carrier.
It would be conventionally powered, with a standard displacement of 50,000 tonnes, and have a ski-jump flight deck, features that are very similar to those of the Liaoning.
The new warship will be slightly lighter than the Liaoning but will have more space for fighter jets, according to lfeng.com, an online news arm of Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV.
J-15 fighter jet pilots and crew were training on the Liaoning and will be able to transition seamlessly to the new carrier, the report said.
Retired major general Xu Guangyu said military assessments indicated that China was ready and able to develop a catapult launch system but top brass had opted for a more dated ski-jump take-off because it would allow for a smoother transition for the J-15.
Beijing has yet to officially announce the name of the carrier. An aircraft carrier in China is required to be named after a province or direct-controlled municipalities.
The naming of an aircraft carrier is decided by the State Council or the General Staff Department, the former command organ and the headquarters for the People’s Liberation Army.
But the department was disbanded in January 2016, and it is still unclear whether the newly-formed Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission has the right to make such a decision.
