I hope this doesn’t make the Chinese foolhardy enough to stumble into a dust-up with the Japanese over the disputed islands. The JDF would smoke them.

“Chinese food….? AGAIN?”

And, an aircraft carrier is just the most prominent piece of the puzzle, you can’t do power projection with just the carrier alone, you need the aircraft (obviously), you need the supporting battlegroup and other noncombatant assets to support it, otherwise your carrier is just a bigger than normal target.

As carriers go, — it’s first and foremost only a pocket carrier, with about have the displacement and 1/3 the capacity of the Carl Vinson. It’s also the lower tech and inferior ski-ramp design that will limit what they can launch off of it if they ever do get planes.

I agree with others when they say it’s a colossal waste of money. China is nowhere near being a blue water navy. This ship’s is good for whipping up patriotic feelings among the Chinese and little else.

The mark “16” emblazoned on the carrier’s side indicates it is limited to training, Chinese and other military experts said. China does not have planes capable of landing on the carrier and so far training for such landings has been carried out on land, they said.