By Zarak Khan | 2025-12-03

Japan has voiced alarm over China's commissioning of the Fujian aircraft carrier, warning that the new vessel marks a decisive escalation in Beijing's military posture and expands its capacity to project power deep into contested waters.

Tokyo views the People's Liberation Army Navy's third carrier not as a routine addition but as a troubling expansion of China's long-range operational capacity, particularly near Japan and Taiwan.

The Fujian, named after the Chinese province facing Taiwan, entered service on November 5 in Sanya, Hainan province, and is especially consequential as China's first carrier equipped with an Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System.

Alarmingly for Japan, the new carrier's formation rapidly embarked on its "first on-sea live force training" mission just weeks after its commissioning.

The formation "conducted various training exercises, including fleet navigation, vessel-aircraft joint search and rescue, and carrier-based aircraft takeoffs and landings," according to Chinese state-run Xinhua.

"Various types of carrier-based aircraft ... completed rounds of catapult-assisted take-offs and landings on the Fujian," Xinhua reported.

This swift deployment suggests an aggressive intent to achieve full operational readiness.

Tokyo will "closely monitor" Chinese military operations near Japan and will "calmly and resolutely" respond, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said, according to Kyodo News.

China seeks to expand its operational reach across distant seas and airspace, he said, affirming that Japan will take "all possible measures to ensure vigilance and surveillance" in nearby areas.

Larger and more advanced than China's first two carriers, Liaoning and Shandong, the Fujian highlights Beijing's rapid naval expansion.

China's three carriers still lag far behind the United States' 11-carrier fleet.

Japan on alert

Beijing is seeking not only to expand its operational reach but also to erode deterrence by normalizing the presence of heavily armed Chinese vessels near sensitive air and sea corridors, say analysts and Japanese officials.

In September, the Fujian sailed through the Taiwan Strait and into the South China Sea as part of its sea trials.

Defense ministries in both Japan and Taiwan monitored the carrier's movements, which brought it within approximately 200km of the disputed, Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands (known as the Diaoyu Islands in China). Beijing and Taipei both claim the islands too.

Beijing does not rule out using force to seize Taiwan, a democratic island that it calls a renegade province. It also claims more than 80% of the South China Sea as its territory.

"For Japan, dislodging China from the Taiwan Strait is essential for survival and preventing a complete Chinese dominance," the Eurasian Times, in a November 29 analysis, said.

A large-scale Chinese attack on Taiwan risks "direct clashes with Japanese patrol vessels and air defenses" or could include "deliberate Chinese strikes to neutralize Japan's nearby bases" that the Pentagon might want to use against China, the news site continued.

"Therefore, Tokyo views a Taiwan contingency as inseparable from its own territorial defense," it said.

Island chain risks

The Fujian program is meant to serve China's far-reaching maritime ambitions rather than defensive needs, say security analysts.

Carriers are "key to Chinese leadership's vision of China as a great power with a blue-water navy," Greg Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Associated Press (AP) in November.

While China's navy wishes to dominate the waters around the so-called first island chain around Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines, it also seeks the ability to contest the second island chain, according to Poling.

The United States has key military bases on Guam and elsewhere in the second chain.

"A carrier doesn't really help you in the First Island Chain, but it's key to that contest, if you want one, with the Americans in the wider Indo-Pacific," Poling said, according to the AP.

China has been "intensifying its activities across the entire region surrounding Japan ... extending beyond the so-called ... first island chain to the second island chain," the Japanese government said in its 2025 defense white paper, agreeing with Poling.

Tokyo termed China's external posture "a matter of serious concern for Japan and the international community." It urged a response relying on Japan's own "comprehensive national power" and on cooperation with the United States, like-minded countries and others.

The report cites a pattern of unsafe behavior: a China Coast Guard helicopter breached Japanese airspace in May this year, a Chinese carrier sailed near Japan's territorial waters in September 2024 and a Chinese military aircraft breached Japanese airspace in August 2024.