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Satellite images taken on Wednesday and shared on social media showed the Fujian and the older Shandong carrier berthed side by side at Yulin Naval Base in Sanya. It was the first time the two carriers had been seen together at the same pier.
Additional images indicated that four tugboats had escorted the Fujian as it entered the harbour.
“By mid-afternoon, the Fujian was berthed opposite the Shandong aircraft carrier,” Joaquin Camarena, a former US Marine Corps intelligence analyst, wrote on social media.
Camarena had posted a video the previous day suggesting the vessel was returning to Sanya’s comprehensive support base after trials off the coast of Hainan.
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The ship’s earlier trials were confined to the Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea, but this latest deployment from the Shanghai shipyard where it was built marked the first time it had sailed south for trials.
