China included Liaoning as its first Aircraft Carrier

China on 25 September 2012 launched its first aircraft carrier giving a push to its fast expanding navy's blue-water capability beyond its territorial waters.

The aircraft carrier is a former Soviet ship with a capacity of 60000 tonne that is brought from Ukraine and later renovated in China. The carrier is capable of accommodating 33 fixed wing aircraft.

It is named as 'Liaoning', after a Chinese province liberated from Japanese occupation in 1945.

The aircraft carrier came amid high end dispute between China and Japan on East China Sea islands, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.
The aircraft carrier, which is formerly known as the Soviet ship Varyag, underwent about seven years of refitting efforts to install engines, weapons, as well as a year-long sea trial.

With this advancement China has become the tenth country in the world and the last among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to have an aircraft carrier in active service.

What is Air craft carrier?

An aircraft carrier is a warship which is a designed with a mission of positioning and recovering aircraft, acting as a seagoing airbase. It allows a naval force to project air power worldwide without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations. It is extremely expensive to built and important to protect.

Among the ten nations that possess an aircraft carrier, six have only one. Twenty-one aircraft carriers are currently active throughout the world with the U.S. Navy operating 11.