BEIJING: China today launched sea trials for the Fujian, its third and most advanced aircraft carrier, state media reported.
The start of tests by the Chinese navy came nearly two years after the aircraft carrier was first unveiled in June 2022.
The Fujian, entirely designed and built domestically, is larger and more advanced than the Shandong, commissioned in late 2019, and the Liaoning, which China bought second-hand from Ukraine in 1998.
The development of the Fujian is part of a build-up central to President Xi Jinping's bid to make China the preeminent military power in the region, with a "blue-water" navy capable of projecting power far from China's coast.
The Fujian, which features a full-length, flat flight deck with an advanced catapult-launch system for jets, takes its name from the Chinese province opposite democratically governed Taiwan.
It had been stationed at Shanghai's Jiangnan Shipyard, where it was undergoing tests.
CCTV reported that the Fujian had set out to sea just after 8am this morning.
The sea trials are a final step before the aircraft carrier is put into service by China's navy.
That process was expected to take up to a year. The Shandong conducted nine sea tests before it was commissioned.
The test came at a time of escalating tensions in the South China Sea. The Philippines today said China's coast guard had fired water cannons at two ships on the Scarborough Shoal.
That submerged reef is one of the flashpoints inside Manila's 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone, which Beijing claims as sovereign territory along with 90 per cent of the South China Sea. An international tribunal invalidated China's claim in 2016, but Beijing does not recognise the ruling.
China Daily quoted China's navy as saying the Fujian's test run at sea was intended to assess the "reliability and stability of the carrier's propulsion and electric power systems".
It said the carrier was among "the most important military hardware" China is developing.
Only the United States, with 11 aircraft carriers and nine aircraft-carrying amphibious assault ships, has more of the vessels than China. — Reuters