How Ukrainian Technology Boosted China’s Naval Development

Cooperation between Ukrainian defense industries and Beijing has deepened since sale of Soviet-era carrier

Varyag, the Soviet aircraft carrier purchased by the Chinese regime and relaunched in 2012 as the Type 001 Liaoning, before refitting. Public Domain

In 2012, the People’s Liberation Army Navy launched its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning. The project attracted close interest from the media and experts, as the Liaoning was built in Ukraine in the twilight of the Cold War, before being sold to China in 1999, originally on the condition that it would not be refitted for military use.

Instead, the Liaoning, formerly named Varyag, became the basis for the Chinese communist regime’s ambitious program to design and deploy its own aircraft carriers. The sale and refit of Varyag fit into an important post-Cold War trend: Ukraine, which inherited much of its outsized defense industry and development firms from the former Soviet Union, has increasingly come to view China as its main client.

$20 Million for 30 Years of Soviet Tech

Varyag, originally named for the city of Riga before its first rechristening in 1990, was laid down in 1985 at the Black Sea shipyard and launched in a partial state of completion in 1988, when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, progress on the unfinished ship was halted.