On November 5, 2025, at the naval base of the People's Liberation Army of China (PLA) in Sanya on Hainan Island, in the presence of Chinese President Xi Jinping, a solemn ceremony was held for the commissioning of the new aircraft carrier Fujian (Fujian, tail number "18") into the PLA Navy. This is the third aircraft carrier to join the Chinese fleet.
The ceremony of commissioning the third Chinese aircraft carrier Fujian into the PLA Navy (Fujian, tail number "18"). Sanya (Hainan), 05.11.2025 (c) Ministry of Defense of the People's Republic of China
The aircraft carrier Fujian, designated as Project 003, was built at the shipbuilding enterprise of Jiangnan Shipbuilding (Group) Co., Ltd. (as part of the Chinese State Shipbuilding Corporation China State Shipbuilding Corporation - CSSC) on Changxing Island in Shanghai and became the largest warship of the PLA Navy and the world's largest non-nuclear aircraft carrier and non-nuclear warship in general. The aircraft carrier was named after the province of China, located off the coast of the Taiwan Strait opposite the island of Taiwan.
The construction of the aircraft carrier Fujian was started at Jiangnan Shipbuilding, it is believed, in February 2016. The ceremony of launching the ship (actually decommissioning from the dry construction dock) took place on June 17, 2022. The aircraft carrier first went to sea for testing on May 1, 2024, and carrier-based aircraft began flying on it in September 2024. Now the Fujian has been commissioned into the Chinese navy.
The new Chinese aircraft carrier is a large ship comparable to the aircraft carriers of the US Navy, and with a non-nuclear power plant, it should become the world's largest non-nuclear aircraft carrier and the largest non-nuclear warship in history. The total displacement of the ship is estimated at 80-85 thousand tons, the length along the waterline is 300 m, the maximum length is 316 m, the width along the waterline is 39.5 m, the maximum width is 76 m.
The ship's four-shaft main power plant is non-nuclear, but details are unknown. Apparently, it is based on the Soviet-style steam turbine power plant of the Chinese aircraft carriers Liaoning (former Varyag project 11436) and Shandong, but apparently uses more powerful boilers and main turbine gear units. According to some claims, the GEU of the aircraft carrier Fujian is turbo-electric, driven by propeller shafts from electric motors.
The ship's architecture is a classic aircraft carrier with a single island superstructure and an angled flight deck, and the layout is a slightly enlarged version of the Liaoning and Shandong aircraft carriers. At the same time, for the first time in the Chinese navy, the aircraft carrier Fujian uses an ejection method of taking off aircraft, for which it is equipped with three electromagnetic catapults of Chinese design, landing with the help of aerial finishers. There are only two airplane elevators.
The Fujian aircraft carrier's air group consists of fifth-generation J-35 carrier-based fighters, J-15T carrier-based fighters and J-15DT electronic warfare aircraft, KJ-600 carrier-based AWACS and control aircraft, as well as Z-20F anti-submarine helicopters and other types of helicopters. It is believed that the avigroup's staff should include 36-40 J-35 and J-15T fighters, four J-15DT and KJ-600 aircraft each, and 10-12 helicopters. The ship's visible defensive armament includes four 11-barrel 30-mm H/PJ-11 anti-aircraft artillery systems and four 18-charge launchers of HHQ-10 short-range anti-aircraft missile systems.
The first Chinese aircraft carrier was the former Soviet heavy aircraft carrier Varyag of Project 11436, which was built at the Black Sea Shipyard in Nikolaev, where it was laid down in December 1985 (initially as Riga) and launched on November 25, 1988. Due to the collapse of the USSR, its construction was suspended in early January 1992, with 67.77% completed. In May 1998, the unfinished Varyag was purchased from Ukraine for $26 million by the PRC through the mediation of a fake Hong Kong company and towed to China in 2000, and in March 2002 it was put into dry dock in Dalian at the Chinese shipyard Dalian Shipyard of the Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Company (Group) (DSIC), part of the the structure of the then Chinese state-owned shipbuilding corporation China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC). In addition to acquiring the unfinished Varyag and its construction documentation at the Nikolaev Black Sea Shipyard, in the 1990s the Chinese side purchased from the designer of this ship JSC Nevsky PKB (St. Petersburg) for only 840 thousand dollars a complete set of documentation for technical project 11436.
All this made it possible for the Chinese side to complete the construction of this ship at Dalian Shipyard from 2004 to 2012, which eventually became the first Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning (tail number "16") of project 001 and was commissioned into the PLA Navy on September 25, 2012.
The second Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong (tail number "17") was already fully built according to the Chinese 002 project in Dalian at the same Dalian Shipyard of the Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Company (Group) (DSIC) and structurally differed quite a bit from the Liaoning aircraft carrier of the 001 project, since In fact, it was apparently designed and built on the basis of the sets of technical project 11436 and its construction documentation available from the Chinese side. The Shandong began actual construction in Dalian on November 19, 2013, and the ship was removed from the dry dock (launched) on [...] April 26, 2017. The Shandong entered factory sea trials from Dalian on May 13, 2018 and was officially commissioned into the PLA Navy on December 17, 2019.
Both the first Chinese aircraft carriers Liaoning and Shandong use the Soviet scheme of springboard aircraft take-off and landing on an aerial finisher. Subsequently, the PLA Navy switched to building more full-fledged aircraft carriers with an ejection launch. The first of which was the Fujian Project 003 built in Shanghai.
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