Senior PLA naval officer pledges 'bigger and better' aircraft carriers

A senior naval officer says China will have more aircraft carriers and they will probably be bigger and more powerful than its first carrier, the Liaoning, which was commissioned in September.

"China will have more than one aircraft carrier," Rear Admiral Song Xue , deputy chief of staff of the People's Liberation Army Navy, told foreign military attaches at a ceremony to celebrate the 64th anniversary of the navy's founding on Tuesday, Xinhua reported.

"We hope the next aircraft carrier can be bigger, because then it would be able to carry more aircraft and be more powerful," he added. Without giving details, he said that some foreign media reports about China building new aircraft carriers in Shanghai were not accurate, Xinhua reported.

It quoted Song as saying that more than a thousand Chinese enterprises had participated in construction and refitting work on the Liaoning over more than a decade. Song is the most senior Chinese naval officer to confirm Beijing's carrier plans, with Asian neighbours concerned about its rising military assertiveness amid territorial disputes in the East and South China seas.

Tensions between Beijing and Tokyo flared again on Tuesday after 168 Japanese lawmakers visited a Tokyo war shrine and both countries sent ships to waters off the disputed Diaoyu Islands, known as the Senkakus in Japan, in the East China Sea.

The Chinese navy has also stepped up regular naval patrols and drills in disputed island chains in the South China Sea, which are also claimed in part by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, in the past month.

The said last week that the Liaoning, based on the hull of a Soviet Kuznetsov-class carrier, would have its first high seas trial later this year.