BEIJING, China’s latest video released by the navy underlines China’s blue-water naval ambitions, fueling speculation that its fourth aircraft carrier currently under construction will be a nuclear-powered one.
“Into the Deep,” a video film released on Wednesday to commemorate the 77th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army Navy, shows the Chinese navy’s transformation from maritime ambitions to coastal defense.
The video also highlights China’s “blue water” navy’s ability to conduct deep-sea operations, including footage of realistic exercises far from home in the Western Pacific and the use of advanced equipment.
It also displays a compass passed down from generation to generation by naval officers, named after the three aircraft carriers currently in service, the Liaoning, Shandong and Fujian.
But according to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, the fourth character was named “river ship,” suggesting it could be a nuclear-powered ship, since “river” sounds like the Chinese word for “nuclear” and “ship” means “ship.”
China has not officially confirmed or denied that it is building a new aircraft carrier, but satellite images taken over the past few years have shown that a large ship is being built at a shipyard in the northeastern city of Dalian.
The images show the ship is similar in size to the United States’ Gerald R. Ford-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, fueling speculation about whether similar propulsion methods will be used.
A further clue was that photos of the ship taken in February also showed what looked like a nuclear reactor containment vessel, The Washington Post reported.
In November last year, China’s third aircraft carrier Fujian was commissioned at a ceremony attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping. It is said to be the most modern warship equipped with electromagnetic catapults.
The Fujian is equipped with an electromagnetic aircraft launch system used only on the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier.
Years after the Indian Navy started operating aircraft carriers, China is the last major country to select an aircraft carrier for its navy.
China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was commissioned in 2012 as a modified version of a Soviet-era ship, followed by the domestically produced aircraft carrier, the Shandong, which entered service in 2019.
The military said the Fujian ship entered service after the J-15T, J-35 and Kongjing 600 carrier-based aircraft successfully completed ejection takeoff and arrested landing training on its flat deck.
All three carriers are conventionally powered. Among them, Fujian is the largest, with a displacement of 80,000 tons.
Analysts say that as tensions with the United States increase, China may build more aircraft carriers to operate on multiple sea routes around the world.
With the commissioning of the Fujian, China is also likely to expand its carrier deployment in India’s backyard, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, where China’s naval fleet is active, with bases in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa and Gwadar in Pakistan, as well as the Hambantota commercial port in Sri Lanka that China acquired in a debt swap.
According to recent reports, the Chinese Navy currently has the world’s largest combat fleet, with 234 warships, compared with 219 for the U.S. Navy.
However, the U.S. Navy still dominates with 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.
The Indian Navy, which has two aircraft carriers INS Vikrant and INS Vikramaditya, is also catching up, commissioning more naval ships to maintain its dominance in the Indian Ocean.
This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
