Key Points and Summary on China’s Aircraft Carrier History – China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, has a bizarre history rooted in deception.
-In 1998, a Chinese company with military ties purchased the unfinished, ex-Soviet carrier Varyag from Ukraine for $20 million under the guise of converting it into a floating casino in Macau—a story that was quickly debunked.
-After being towed to China, the hull was refitted and commissioned into the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) in 2012 as the Liaoning.
-This “casino carrier” gambit was a crucial first step that allowed China to master carrier operations and jumpstart its naval aviation ambitions.
How an Old Soviet Rust Bucket Became a Chinese Aircraft Carrier
In the last decade of the Soviet Union’s history, Moscow’s navy finally achieved its long-running ambitions of building an aircraft carrier that could launch conventional short take-off but arrested recovery (STOBAR) aircraft. The carrier, which underwent several name changes, was eventually christened the Admiral Kuznetsov.
A second ship built to nearly the exact specifications, the Varyag, was only partially fitted out when the USSR imploded in 1991. The ship was 70 percent complete, but due to the fact that the only shipyards in the Soviet shipbuilding industry large enough to handle the construction of a carrier were located in Mykolaiv, this carrier was now the property of the government of Ukraine.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC), India, and other parties expressed interest in acquiring the vessel. Finally, in 1998, the Varyag was put up for auction. A Chinese businessman named Xu Zengping bid US $20 million for the would-be carrier. Still, he purchased the vessel under the name of the Chong Lot Tourism and Entertainment Company, a company registered in Macau.
Unsurprisingly, newspapers in Hong Kong later reported that Xu was a retired PLA soldier, and that most of Chong Lot’s board was composed of former naval officers and Chinese nationals from the province of Shandong. (This is the same province that happens to be the home port for the North Sea Fleet.)
From Casino to Aircraft Carrier
Xu initially claimed that the Varyag was going to be towed halfway around the world to the former Portuguese enclave of Macau in southern China. There, it was supposed to become a floating casino complex. These plans were presented as prima facie evidence that the ship was not intended for any military use by Beijing.
There were only two problems with this claim. One was that the Macau authorities never received any application for a casino license from Chong Lot. Another was that the water in Macau’s harbor was far too shallow to accommodate the vessel in the first place.
The ownership of the Varyag was eventually transferred to the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). It then required another nine years of re-fitting, installing a propulsion system, and re-building and reconfiguring all the on-board systems to turn the ship into the PLAN’s very first aircraft carrier, which was then re-named the CV 16 Liaoning.
The ship was finally launched in 2012. Five years later, the PLAN shipyards built the very first carrier actually to be built in the PRC.
This was a slightly larger copy of the Liaoning, which was named the CV-17 Shandong and entered active service in 2019.
Naval Air Power
Like the Kuznetsov, the Varyag was built without a catapult to simplify its construction.
Designing and fitting a catapult was considered incompatible with the mission profile that the Russians had in mind for the carrier.
Furthermore, the technologies did not exist in the USSR at the time to design something along the lines of the US Navy’s steam catapults.
Instead, the ship was built with a ski-ramp take-off flight deck. It did, however, still use an arrested landing system for recovering aircraft back aboard the deck.
The aircraft selected for the Russian carriers was a navalized version of the Sukhoi Su-27 fighter, designated the Su-33. The design team at Shenyang Aerospace, which reverse-engineered the Su-27 and produced the J-11B fighter for the PLAAF, was then charged with performing the same task with the Russian carrier fighter.
This design would become known as the J-15, which has been the main PLAN AF carrier fighter since the Liaoning first began operating aircraft aboard its flight deck. The J-15 was heavier and varied in many aspects from the Su-33. This was because the Shenyang plant copied an early prototype of the Russian aircraft, known as the Su-27K, rather than an operational model.
The J-15 also utilized the same Saturn/Luyulka AL-31F engine as the Su-33, although it was modified to be more effective in the marine environment than a standard version of the engine. More recently, the Shenyang plant has developed a modified version of the aircraft, the J-15T, which permits the aircraft to be launched by a catapult.
China’s Aircraft Carrier Future
What we still do not know is the future of the Liaoning. The PLAN is now building conventional flattop carriers that are equipped with catapults and will continue to do so in the future, leaving the ski-ramp design behind. For the moment, it appears that Liaoning and Shandong may turn out to be only training platforms that served their purpose, and now it is time for the navy to move on to the next generation of carriers.
Whatever the case, the long journey of the ship is one of the more protracted sagas in the history of the development of Chinese naval air power.
That saga may come to an end before too long, but its history does demonstrate Beijing’s determination to become a significant maritime power.
About the Author:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs and Director of the Asian Research Centre with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
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