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China Commissions its Third and Most Advanced Aircraft Carrier

Xi Jinping, center, with crewmembers aboard Fujian (PLA / state media)
Xi Jinping, center, with crewmembers aboard Fujian (PLA / state media)

Published Nov 6, 2025 11:42 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

China's newest and most sophisticated aircraft carrier, the Fujian, has been formally commissioned into service after a series of final trials in the South China Sea. Chinese state media confirmed the milestone on Friday, and noted that President Xi Jinping attended the ceremony. 

Fujian is a conventionally-powered carrier built at CSSC Jiangnan, and is much more advanced that the earlier Liaoning and Shandong, both built to Soviet specifications. Fujian is the PLA Navy's first carrier with catapults, which are critical to modern naval aviation. Without catapult-assisted takeoff, fighters have to downsize their payloads in order to get off the deck, leaving them with less range and armament.

On Fujian's flight deck, the PLA Navy skipped over the traditional steam catapult technology found aboard other carriers and - at President Xi Jinping's personal direction - moved to a DC variant of an electromagnetic launch system (EMALS), a technology only found aboard the U.S. Navy's new USS Gerald R. Ford. EMALS' post-installation technical issues contributed to significant delays in Ford's commissioning; while the uptime of China's version is not known, the PLA Navy has released extensive video footage of launch and recovery operations of multiple aircraft types aboard Fujian, including the J-35 stealth fighter and the KJ-600 early warning aircraft. 

  

The Fujian's more capable airwing and higher sortie rate position the PLA Navy for "far seas" combat operations, military commentator Zhang Junshe told state-owned Global Times. Liaoning and Shandong are suitable for coastal defense, but the increased combat radius of Fujian's fighters and the ability to launch an early-warning aircraft position the carrier for missions further from home. 

A fourth carrier is under construction, and the PLA Navy is believed to be working up to nuclear propulsion for future hulls. 

While impressive in its scale and speed of advancement, China's carrier program is not yet fully mature, Western observers say. "This is not the 'completion of operational deployment,' but rather the 'starting point for challenges,'" wrote analyst Aita Moriki for Japan's National Institute for Defense Studies. "The PLA Navy still faces numerous hurdles to overcome, including improving the reliability of EMALS and arresting gear systems, collecting vast amounts of operational data, and expanding the quantity and enhancing the quality of its carrier-based aircraft pilots."

The timing of the commissioning ceremony followed days after a much-anticipated meeting between Xi and U.S. President Donald Trump in Busan, South Korea, which resulted in a climb-down from recent trade disputes. After the sit-down, Trump agreed to cancel planned port fees on Chinese ships for one year - a core element of the administration's plan to counter Chinese shipbuilding dominance -  and Xi agreed to relax controls on the flow of rare earth elements to American manufacturers, including defense companies.