The salt-tinged breeze off People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) base at Sanya stirred the taut flags atop a massive grey hull. Below decks, engineers monitored humming circuits of a new electromagnetic catapult; above, gulls wheeled lazily under a sanding-pink sunrise. The air was heavy with expectation — and something darker: resolve. As the sea whispered against steel, a new chapter in China’s naval story was quietly, inexorably being written. With 2025 marking the formal commissioning of the third Chinese carrier Fujian, the clang of rivets and the swell of diesel engines echo not just across china’s shipyards but across the…