First Jet Lands On New Chinese Aircraft Carrier

By Mark Stone, China Correspondent in Beijing

A Chinese fighter jet has made a successful landing on the country's first aircraft carrier.

Footage released by China's State Television shows the Chinese made J-15 jet touching down on the Liaoning sometime over the past week.

The successful landing will be seen as a further attempt by Beijing to project its military might beyond its borders.

China has been locked in a series of territorial disputes with almost all its neighbours in the region including Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam.

According to local media reports, the successful landing was completed by pilot Dai Mingmeng from the Sea Eagle Regiment of the East China Sea Fleet.

His jet, the J-15, is still in its trial stages. Nicknamed the 'Flying Shark' it is based on a similar Russian plane and is said to carry anti-ship, air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles.

Chinese State media claim that it is comparable to the US F-18, but given the secrecy surrounding Chinese military hardware, those claims cannot be verified.

The Liaoning was unveiled to the world in a lavish ceremony in September attended by Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Named after the province where it was refitted, the ship is a former Soviet aircraft carrier. It was built in Ukraine but mothballed after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Tensions are rising over the future of the Diaoyu Islands

In 1998 a Chinese tour operator bought the ship in an auction with plans to convert it into a Macao casino.

But on arrival in Chinese waters, after a lengthy and problematic journey around the world, the plans changed and an extensive military refit began.

Traditionally, China had what is known as a 'green water navy' whose sole objective is to provide coastal defences.

The acquisition of the aircraft carrier is a sign of Beijing's desire to become a 'blue-water' navy: projecting its might far from its shores.

China has a longstanding but historically dormant claim to a large swathe of the South China Sea and a number of small islands in the East China Sea.

But recently China has been much more vocal with its claim. This has caused significant diplomatic and military tensions with Vietnam, The Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Japan. 

Islands in the disputed waters are important to each of the nations involved because of what might be beneath them but also because of the domestic fallout that losing or capturing them could provoke.

Nationalism has played a significant role in stoking tensions particularly between China and Japan.

Japanese elections next month could once again escalate the tensions over a series of rocky outcrops known in China as the Diaoyu Islands and in Japan as the Senkaku Islands.

Posters have been erected in Beijing telling people that the islands 'Belong to China'.

China, Japan and South East Asia are all have vital import and export markets for Europe and the West. Any escalation of the maritime dispute could have broad consequences.

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