On the seventeenth of last July, the Chinese Navy announced the launch of the third aircraft carrier during a ceremony held at the shipyard in Shanghai, the capital. The aircraft carrier was previously known as “Type 003”, but it is now officially called “Fujian”. ), after one of the coastal provinces of China, and is the most powerful aircraft carrier in the world after the US aircraft carriers.

The ambitions of the Chinese Navy to operate domestically-made aircraft carriers date back to the seventies of the last century, but its actual path towards this goal began in 1985 when Beijing acquired 4 Soviet-made aircraft carriers for study purposes.

It took until 2012 for Beijing to produce its first aircraft carrier under the name "Liaoning" or (Type 001), however, it was not a complete Chinese production, but it was an incomplete Soviet carrier that the Chinese bought, completed, and allocated for training purposes only.

By 2017, Beijing launched the carrier "Shandong" or (Type 002), which is the first fully domestic aircraft carrier, and then the carrier "Fujian" in the current year 2022, with estimates indicating Beijing's desire to own 6 aircraft carriers by 2030.

However, China's efforts to modernize its navy are not limited to building aircraft carriers.

China is already the country with the largest naval force in the world in terms of the number of ships and operating units, with a total of about 355 marine pieces compared to only about 300 pieces for the US Navy. for the fleet and others, in addition to the 85 patrol boats carrying anti-ship cruise missiles.

But while China takes the lead in numbers of pieces, the US Navy is still the most powerful, lethal, and dominant on the global scene, far ahead of all other powers.

But the problem from the Americans' point of view is that the maritime gap between them and China is steadily shrinking.

For example, between 2017-2019, China built more ships than India, Japan, Australia, France, and the United Kingdom combined, and it is estimated that every 4 years the Chinese navy expands to the size of the entire French navy.

But what is most contemplative is not just the number of pieces, but the rates of modernization, as Chinese ships, planes, and naval weapons are now more modern and capable than they were at the beginning of the 1990s, and are now comparable in many respects to those of Western navies.

In this video from Meidan, we highlight the rapid development of the Chinese navy, from aircraft carriers to submarines to anti-ship missiles, and its relationship to China's strategy to expand its naval presence in its vicinity, and even to compete with the United States on the world stage.

For Beijing, the navy is no longer just a necessary tool of military control, but also a tool of restitution for what Beijing calls "one hundred years of national humiliation," a term used to describe the period of intervention and subjugation of the country by Western powers and Japan from 1839 to 1949, a period that the Chinese call the "Century of Humiliation".

During that period, most of those attacking forces entered China by sea, and because the century of humiliation is an essential part of the narrative that represents the identity of contemporary China, this "maritime anxiety" that lasted for more than a hundred years must produce a reaction at the same level.

We can call the current century the "Century of Anger" for China, and no one knows how much the Dragon's Fury will change the face of the world.