Fujian province is seen as a symbol of President Xi Jinping’s reforms and the rapid expansion of China’s military.
Published November 7, 2025
China’s newest aircraft carrier has been officially commissioned after extensive sea trials, according to Chinese state media, with experts saying the ship will help the world’s largest navy expand China’s sphere of influence beyond its own waters.
President Xi Jinping boarded the aircraft carrier Fujian, named after the Chinese province that borders Taiwan, on Wednesday to tour the city of Sanya in southern Hainan province, state news agency Xinhua reported on Friday.
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According to state media, more than 2,000 representatives of the Chinese navy and aircraft carrier construction forces attended the commissioning and flag presentation ceremony.
Fujian is China’s third aircraft carrier, but the first independently designed and built model.
The ship is likely to be a much more effective naval weapon than China’s first two Russian-designed aircraft carriers, Liaoning and Shandong. These aircraft carriers are small and use ramps to launch their aircraft.
With its flat flight deck and electromagnetic catapult for takeoff, which are only found on the newest U.S. Navy Ford-class aircraft carriers, Fujian will be able to carry more heavily armed jet fighters.
During sea trials in Fujian province, the Chinese Navy launched a new carrier-based version of the J-35 stealth fighter and the KJ-600 early warning aircraft, as well as a variant of the established J-15 fighter.
The ability to carry its own reconnaissance aircraft means that, unlike Liaoning and Shandong, Fujian does not operate blindly outside the range of ground support and can operate state-of-the-art aircraft over greater distances.
It remains to be seen how quickly Fujian will be ready for combat, but the ship is perhaps the most visible example of Xi’s overhaul of China’s military and its rapid military expansion.
Chinese leaders have previously said their goal is for China to have a modernized military by 2035 and a “world-class” military to rival that of the United States by 2050. With Fujian, the Chinese government has taken another important step toward closing that gap.
Greg Pauling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Associated Press that aircraft carriers are “key to China’s leadership’s vision of China as a great power with a blue-water navy.”
Poling said the Chinese navy wants to control waters in the South China Sea, East China Sea and Yellow Sea (the so-called first island chain around Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines), but it also wants to challenge U.S. dominance deep in the Pacific Ocean.
“Aircraft carriers are not very useful in the first island chain, but they are key to competing with the Americans in the broader Indo-Pacific, if we want to,” he said.
