Unlike J-15s, helicopters might have problems conducting fleet CAP and strike missions for China's far flung commercial and maritime empire. I'm not sure if you're just playing the devil's advocate, but the notion PLAN rebuilt the Liaoning, reverse engineered the J-15, and systematically trained ship and deck aviation crews as a standalone doesn't make sense. We'll see more Chinese CVs for sure, and maybe a few CVNs.
I know I'm in the minority but I honestly don't believe a carrier fleet jives with China's foreign policy or strategic goals, at least until either the world accepts China as they are or decides to be outright hostile towards them. A lot of people feel that China needs a military in the image of those that came before them as they develop myriad international interests but I think that is really not thinking from China's perspective and objectively evaluating the strategic picture.
Maybe they will build a second Liaoning-mod CV per their pattern of initially rolling out two of each new ship class, I would still be somewhat surprised but I would be very surprised if they went further than that within a decade from now. If they do build a second carrier much of the justification would be to defray the costs of the entire carrier program that you mentioned and also have a more robust CV training program in preparation for CV fleet expansion in the even further longer term future.
As expressed many times in the past my opinion is that the Varyag was an opportunistic project, when else, where else, and how else would China get access to a carrier and information on a carrier program for cheap? No where no how, even now and probably many years into the future even with closer Sino-Russian military industrial co-operation, even if all of a sudden everyone became willing to sell carriers to China it would not be as good a deal as the Varyag was.
Probably out of a combination of hubris, politics, rudimentary PR skills, and career/reputation of enough important enough people being attached to the carrier program China itself may have made a bigger deal out of its carrier program than it really is. It snowballed overseas as it dovetails nicely with China threat scaremongering and others' fights to maintain or increase their own defense budgets.
That's just my train of thought, the jury's still out and time will tell!
