How does the Chinese aircraft carrier "Shandong" compare to the carriers of other nations?

Sam Politics & Military Observer 
Answered December 17, 2019
Comparison was done here so not going to repeat again:

The Shandong carrier-based aircraft is boosted to at least 36x J-15, over 50% more than Liaoning Carrier | UnofficialChina.blog

Instead of comparing here, I would discuss the game changing of carriers battle group when powerful nations in hot war.

In modern combat involving carriers battle group on both sides, carriers will be the first target to destroy.

Carrier aircrafts combat radius is merely few hundred kilometres. Saturated mid range missles are good enough to cause significant threat to carriers before jet fighters taking off


The deployment of hypersonic weapons further threaten carriers before it reaches aircrafts combat range.

It will be less likely for carriers of both sides in close range battle, unless war broken out undeclared, which is less likely too.

China's military policy is defensive so that its navy hardly involes in remote offshore combat with carriers.

China’s Defensive National Defense Policy | UnofficialChina.blog

This can be proven by the US latest trial of mid range missles targeting Chinese carriers. I suggest that submarines would be more critical in modern navy combat.


From the US spending 200 billions to build 9 nuke power attacking submarines, we can see submarines will be play more important part in modern navy combat than carriers.

Thus, comparing carriers to carriers is not very meaningful in todays combat. But, comparing between Liaoning and Shandong, the later one doubles aircrafts capacity which greatly increased its striking power.

As to submarines, the value of it is hard to detect. But who knows, as China is developing laser detectors for anti-submarine purpose. It can detect 500 meters below surface which covers basically diving depth of any submarines.

Will China’s new laser satellite become the ‘Death Star’ for submarines?


Carriers are good to bully small countries, but has no impact on powerful ones.

From current development of Chinese army, we can be certain that they are either defensive or for 2nd strike (retaliation). Whilst, the US has been heavily focusing on offensive weapon development.

If really want to compare Shandong with carriers of other nations. I would rank it just below the US carriers in terms of size and technology. The short fall of it is that it is not nuke powered.

From the Chinese Navy development plan, 001 and 002 are basically practice models. Real staff is from 003/CV18 onwards.