China's newest supercarrier is sending shock waves through the Pacific and underscoring how urgently the U.S. must rebuild its own naval edge.
Beijing this month officially launched and commissioned the Fujian, its third and by far most advanced aircraft carrier, an 80,000-ton flat-deck ship able to carry roughly 60 aircraft and sail with up to 10 escort warships.
Analysts say the ship dramatically narrows the naval capability gap with the U.S. and gives China a far more formidable tool to threaten Taiwan and bully neighbors in the South China Sea, The Washington Post reported.
Unlike China's first two, ski-jump carriers, the Fujian uses electromagnetic catapults to hurl fully loaded fighters and early-warning aircraft off its deck — technology previously fielded only by the U.S. Navy's USS Gerald R. Ford.
Chinese and Western experts say the system could "double or triple" the carrier's combat punch by launching heavier jets more often and farther from Chinese shores.
State media boasted that Chinese leader Xi Jinping personally ordered the leap to electromagnetic launch and pressed the catapult button at the commissioning ceremony on Hainan, highlighting how central the ship is to his drive for a "world-class" military by 2049.
Beijing is wasting no time putting the Fujian where it matters most.
The Chinese navy has confirmed the carrier will be homeported at Sanya on Hainan Island, squarely in the disputed South China Sea, where China's sweeping "historic rights" claims clash with the Philippines and other U.S. partners, Newsweek reported.
A second carrier, the Shandong, is already based there, giving Beijing a powerful twin-carrier presence in waters U.S. forces have long patrolled to keep sea lanes open.
The Fujian's air wing is expected to include J-35 stealth fighters, upgraded J-15 strike jets, and the new KJ-600 "brain in the sky" early-warning aircraft, backed by Type 055 "carrier-killer" missile cruisers armed with hypersonic YJ-21 anti-ship missiles.
Together they are designed to help China push U.S. ships beyond the first and second island chains and complicate any American move to aid Taiwan in a crisis.
And the Fujian is only a stepping stone.
Satellite imagery from China's Dalian shipyard indicates Beijing has already begun assembling the Type 004, a nuclear-powered behemoth in the 110,000- to 120,000-ton range, potentially larger than America's Ford-class carriers and capable of embarking more than 90 aircraft with four electromagnetic catapults, Daily Express U.S. reported.
While the U.S. still fields 11 nuclear carriers worldwide, China can concentrate its growing fleet almost entirely on the Indo-Pacific.
That asymmetry, coupled with Beijing's breakneck shipbuilding, has many defense experts warning that America's margin for error is shrinking fast.
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