Satellite Imagery Shows Mystery Ship Built in China amid Breakneck Naval Expansion

China appears to have built a new and unusual aircraft carrier, intriguing experts with a potentially first-of-its-kind vessel that could further increase Beijing’s rapidly expanding maritime power.

Satellite imagery from Planet Labs shows a vessel with a large, open flat top under construction at Guangzhou Shipyard International on Longxue Island, in the southern province of Guangdong.

This potential new aircraft carrier “is of a somewhat unusual shape and size – much smaller than China’s previous naval aircraft carriers,” said Thomas Shugart, a former US Navy submarine commander and now a fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

But the vessel is even smaller than the Type 075 amphibious assault ships used by Beijing’s navy, suggesting that China may be building the world’s first “ostensibly civilian ‘aircraft carrier’ as an oceanographic research vessel of some sort,” Shugart added.

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