Shandong Aircraft carrier (China)
Channel: Main Battle Tank
Date: 20/01/2023

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Recently commissioned, the Type 001A is the first aircraft carrier ever manufactured in China. This warship represents not only a tremendous achievement for China, who now arguably has the strongest fleet it has operated since the time of Zheng He, but also a paradigm shift in the global balance of power. In 2017 her name was not formally announced. There were some internet speculation on the naming of this Chinese warship. However it turned out that this new aircraft carrier is named the Shandong.

   The possibility of building an aircraft carrier has been pondered by Beijing for many long years, and the nation's increasing ability to manufacture commercial vessels of ever greater size and displacement has no doubt tempted the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) to propose building one for some time. Aircraft carriers were a contentious issue in Chinese politics however, due to political and strategic preferences for a larger, more dispersed, and less expensive force of smaller warships, but as China's economy and industry grew, so too did the realization that they really could operate such large warships. The first serious proposal for a Chinese aircraft carrier was made on March 11th 1987 by the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, along with a new class of nuclear attack submarines meant to succeed the Han class (which eventually resulted in the Shang class). This proposal also had the blessing of Liu Huaqing, the PLAN Commander, who was also an outspoken advocate of aircraft carrier development. The government soon accepted this proposal (as indicated by the formation of a training school for carrier aviators at the Guangzhou Naval Academy in May of 1987), though the timeline of China's aircraft carrier program suggests that they opted to proceed cautiously.

   In April of 1987, the PLAN launched and recovered a J-8 II (Finback-B) on the flight deck of the former Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne (which had been stricken and sold for scrap to a Chinese firm). The J-8 II was far from ideal for this purpose, so its success no doubt reinforced the PLAN's determination to develop a carrier of their own. This was further reinforced by Chinese negotiations in 1995-96 with the Spanish firm Empresa Nacional Bazan, over the possibility of purchasing blueprints created by that company for their SAC-200 and SAC-220 aircraft carrier designs. While China ultimately didn't purchase the blueprints or build a similarly designed Carrier, they did nonetheless pay several million US dollars in consulting fees to Bazan, and purchase a number of key technologies for building carriers.

   China in the mean time had been actively seeking to acquire a Kuznetsov class aircraft carrier from Ukraine, the incomplete Varyag. This ultimately came to pass in 2001, when she was finally towed to China, though the ex-Varyag had spend nearly another decade before work to complete her was initiated in 2011, and she was finally commissioned as the Liaoning in 2012. Another important development occurred in 2007, when China purchased four carrier landing systems from Russia, which was confirmed in an August 2008 press conference held by, Mr. Huang Qiang, the speaker of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense. However, the poor condition of the Liaoning has relegated her to serving primarily as a training ship, so it was clear that a different warship was needed to provide China with a plausible carrier aviation capability.

2011 was a watershed event for the development of Chinese carriers, due to several occurrences in that year. The PLAN also constructed a mock-up of an aircraft carrier's flight deck in near Wuhan, complete with a ski jump bow and arrestor cables, for training future carrier pilots. Later, the PLA Chief of the General Staff Chen Bingde formally announced that China had in fact decided to manufacture their own aircraft carrier, but declined to provide further details until it was completed. A month later the Academy of Military Sciences said China reported to the PLAN that at least three carriers were required to protect China's maritime interests.

   Details of the Type 001A's own development still remain obscured to the public, so it is not known when the program actually began, when the final design was settled upon, or when construction was finally authorized and funded.