Summary and Key Points: China’s expanding aircraft carrier fleet is a major step in Beijing’s push for a true blue-water navy, with the Fujian marking its most advanced carrier yet.
-The ship signals real progress, especially with EMALS-style catapults, but major limits remain, including conventional propulsion and deck-layout constraints that could reduce sortie efficiency.
China Aircraft Carrier on the High Seas. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
-The broader takeaway is clear: China’s carriers may not yet match U.S. Navy supercarriers, but they can still pressure U.S.-aligned countries across the Indo-Pacific.
-Added to that, leadership turmoil and corruption allegations inside China’s military raise new questions about long-term planning, secrecy, and how fast Beijing can close the gap.
China’s Aircraft Carrier Fleet Is Growing Fast, but the U.S. Navy Still Has the Edge
China’s expanding aircraft carrier fleet is part of a broader effort by Beijing to build a blue-water People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) fleet with the size and capabilities to project power onto distant shores.
Building out the Chinese carrier fleet would not only bolster China’s maritime capabilities in the littoral waters adjacent to the mainland, and deeper toward the first island chain, but would also allow the PLAN to push farther east into the Pacific.Today, the PLAN has three aircraft carriers in active service. And while the first two are adapted Soviet platforms, the third, the Fujian, incorporates some of the same technologies that went into the U.S. Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) nuclear-powered supercarrier.
China New Carrier Type 003 CCTV Screencap Photo.
CV-18 Fujian aircraft carrier from China. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
But despite the PLAN’s progress in fielding a larger and more mature fleet of carriers, the U.S. Navy still retains significant quantitative and qualitative advantages.
China’s Supercarrier Fleet, Explained: Growing Capabilities, but Still Behind
As one naval affairs expert outlined, the Fujian, China’s third and latest carrier, is by far the most advanced carrier China has built. China’s aircraft carriers remain far from challenging American naval dominance in the Indo-Pacific. In the near term, however, China’s burgeoning naval aviation capabilities pose an immediate threat to countries in the region that are aligned with the United States.
“While China’s carrier strategy may not imply a direct challenge to current US naval capabilities, it does put pressure on America’s regional allies, deviating them from the US-centered security architecture,” that expert noted. China is, however, “working towards the construction of a post-American fleet and emphasizing the importance of foreign bases—such as in Cambodia and the Solomon Islands—for surveillance and rapid deployment.”
And while the Fujian shows significant and rapid progress over the two aircraft carriers that preceded it, the aircraft carrier “falls short of direct competition with the US due to its lack of nuclear propulsion and its smaller scale. Unlike the nuclear-powered super-carriers of the Ford and Nimitz Classes, the Fujian relies on support ships for extended range.
“Moreover, although the Fujian comes with advanced catapults—namely, electromagnetic aircraft launch systems (EMALS)—that align with US technology, tests this past November have shown markedly decreased effectiveness compared to America’s nuclear carriers.”
New China Aircraft Carrier. Image Credit: Weibo.
China New J-35 Fighter on Aircraft Carrier. Image Credit: Chinese Weibo.
Design Flaws
The sentiment was echoed by the South China Morning Post when it outlined what it called the Fujian’s “design flaws.” The admission was striking, given the paper’s increasingly sympathetic voice toward mainland China in recent years. “These issues are largely caused by the Fujian’s conventional propulsion system and are mostly related to aircraft operations,” the newspaper wrote, citing both the aircraft carrier’s conventional propulsion system, as well as its centrally located island superstructure.
The island’s positioning, the article argued, crimps aircraft operational efficiency by reducing available deck space. The SCMP also took issue with the carrier’s aircraft catapults. “Observers have pointed out that one of the Fujian’s catapults encroaches onto the deck, which means it cannot be used when planes are landing.
“Another catapult was too close to the lift used to raise the planes onto the deck, creating another bottleneck.
“Some observers believe that the No 1 aircraft elevator on the Fujian is positioned too far forward because the carrier’s catapult configuration was modified during development, switching from steam catapults to electromagnetic catapults.”
The location of the island superstructure may have been necessitated by the carrier’s conventional propulsion system, which requires valuable real estate on the ship’s deck, as well as belowdecks, for fuel storage and exhaust.
A nuclear-powered aircraft carrier has no need for conventional fuel or a conventional exhaust system, as the article correctly notes—though nuclear-powered vessels do require their own unique support infrastructure.
China Aircraft Carrier Operations. Image Credit: Chinese Navy.
China Aircraft Carrier in Port. Image Credit: Chinese Navy.
China J-35 Fighter on Aircraft Carrier. Image Credit: Chinese Navy.
Xi’s Anticorruption Drive Could Hurt China’s Military
Meanwhile, a recent shake-up at the highest levels of China’s military leadership shed some light on the workings of the Chinese military apparatus. Allegations leveled against General Zhang Youxia, formerly the country’s top man in uniform, accuse the general of accepting bribes. But the allegations also claim the general leaked or sold sensitive technical information about China’s nuclear arsenal to the United States.
General Zhang was part of the Central Military Commission, a tight cadre of generals, headed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, that make the Chinese military’s most consequential policy decisions.
General Zhang’s downfall prefigures potentially the most consequential restructuring of China’s military leadership since Mao Zedong’s time at the helm of the Chinese state—a time during which China’s military was torn apart by infighting, loyalty tests, and personal vendettas.
While there is not necessarily a direct correlation between China’s nuclear weaponry and maritime nuclear propulsion, insight into one could provide insight into the other.
More broadly, however, the allegations against General Zhang suggest that the United States intelligence community has gained access to the highest level of China’s military and political leadership after suffering significant setbacks in 2010-2012.
China Aircraft Carrier. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
During that timeframe, the Chinese government imprisoned or killed 18 to 20 CIA informants in what was categorized as one of the worst American intelligence breaches in decades.
What, if any, information about China’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier plans may have been spirited out of China to the American intelligence community may never come to light. But if plans about China’s nuclear arsenal were passed on, it is hardly a stretch to imagine a similar leak about Chinese warships currently in development.
In any event, it will be some time yet before the PLAN can mount a credible challenge to the combined capabilities of the U.S. Navy and America’s allies in the region.
About the Author: Defense Expert Caleb Larson
Caleb Larson is an American multiformat journalist based in Berlin, Germany. His work covers the intersection of conflict and society, focusing on American foreign policy and European security. He has reported from Germany, Russia, and the United States. Most recently, he covered the war in Ukraine, reporting extensively on the war’s shifting battle lines from Donbas and writing on the war’s civilian and humanitarian toll. Previously, he worked as a Defense Reporter for POLITICO Europe. You can follow his latest work on X.
