"Naval Air: China Reveals CVN 18" Topic

"In an unexpected development there recently appeared on the Chinese Internet photos of a carrier model being displayed at an official event. The detailed model had the hull number 18 and the ship looked similar to an American CVN (a Nimitz class nuclear aircraft carrier). The Chinese CVN has four catapults and three elevators and much other evidence of being nuclear and very similar to the Nimitz class.

The first Chinese carrier, the Liaoning is hull number 16 and photos that appeared in 2013 showed sections of a new Chinese carrier under construction. This ship would probably have hull number 17. All this implies the third Chinese carrier, the second one built in China, would be nuclear and probably closer in design to the recently decommissioned American USS Enterprise (CVN 65). This was the first nuclear powered carrier and it served as the prototype for the subsequent Nimitz class. The Enterprise was an expensive design, and only one was built (instead of a class of six). While a bit longer than the later Nimitz class, it was lighter (92,000 tons displacement, versus 100,000 tons). The Enterprise was commissioned in 1961, almost 40 years after the first U.S. carrier (the Langley) entered service in 1923.

In the two decades after the USS Langley there were tremendous changes in carrier aviation. While the innovation slowed after World War II, major changes continued into the 1950s (jet aircraft, nuclear propelled carriers, SAMs). But in the ensuing half century there has been no major innovation in basic carrier design. This has not been a problem because the carriers have proven useful, at least for the U.S. Navy (the only fleet to use such large carriers) and no one else has maintained a force of these large carriers. Only the U.S. has felt a constant need to get air power to any corner of the planet in a hurry. More importantly, no navy has been able to give battle to the U.S. carrier force since 1945. The Soviets built new anti-carrier weapons and made plans to use them but that war never occurred. China is building carriers but does not yet seem committed to having a lot of them to confront the U.S. but rather just a few to intimidate its neighbors…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Actually, it looks a lot like the Gerald Ford class carrier. Assuming imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the Chinese must be in love with the latest US CVN design, because the islands look pretty similar, including the placement outboard and moved very far aft.

See photos here: link

TBH there's only s many ways to sensibly lay out a CVN. I'd be surprised if they'd done anything different

Yeah, even the Brit's new Queen Elizabeth-class carriers are laid out similarly to the Ford. It's just that the Brits decided to split the Navigation bridge away from the air and deck ops bridge for some reason, so they have two "Islands."

flight deck arrangement is something that can be optimized, but it took the US using various deck arrangements to realize what were bad ideas (port-side elevators forward gets in the way of the waist cats) and what actually worked (two elevators forward on the starboard side to feed the bow cats).