I think it depends a lot on the situation and the opponent - the new british aircraft carriers will also rely on AEW helicopters instead of fixed wing AWACS and they are very much meant for power projection and not just fleet defence.
Let's imagine a civil war in Africa where a faction hostile to chinese interests manages to take over the local airforce and China wanted to intervene either to evacuate its citizens or to help a china friendly faction.
I think a chinese task force with Liaoning to provide air support and some 071s to land marines would be quite adequate. Without the air support provided by the aircraft carrier, this kind of mission might involve much more risk.
That's a bad example.
See, countries on the African continent, save a few at the north and the one at the south, most are just dirt poor, barely able to own an airforce is quite a perk on its own, much less to operate one in any meaningful manner. Now, those who could "operate" one are mostly of transport assets, those of the better-off ones would own a few COIN planes when comes to offensive assets.
Now, the tried and tested rule of
coup d'etat is, if one side able to deploy airforce in any meaningful manner, victory for that side is pretty much a foregone conclusion. When come to consider how small those central African nations typically are, a faction (loyalist or coup faction, take your pick) that can get the airforce onto their side, that coup would be over before the week's end.
Typically however, you'd find the local airforce grounded instead, and then things takes the more typical "how soon the country tear itself apart" route.
And a week is about how long for the PLAN to deploy a carrier taskgroup from China's home waters. Remember, it would be a few decades more of buildup, before China has enough carrier assets to comfortably deploy a taskgroup overseas on constant rotation basis.
And the local airforce which typically of the low-tier quality (if not also quantity), if deployed at all, can easily be dealt with by MANPAD or shipborne SAMs.
Thus, if and when China got invited to bring its navy into play under such scenario, you'd more likely see them re-task the PLAN anti-piracy expedition group to there (due to the fact they're the closest assets deployable, could get there within 72 hours or less); with a typical operation scenario of evacuating expats and such, should the local air force were deemed hostile and require pre-empt neutralisation (an aggressive "strike-first" policy...can't foresee China make such a change of policy but who knows?), LACM strikes on hostile air fields carried out by 052D/055 while local (port of evacuation) air defense carried out by 054A/B, either docked or parked just off the coast; evac is carried out via docked ships, with perhaps helicopter extraction of HVIs like ambassadors.
The typical nature of central African nations means that things would largely settle down before a non-African power getting dragged into play - the only way for it to be otherwise would be the central African region become the "new Cold War" frontline, with China backing a bloc and some other (like Japan) backing another competing bloc..
And need me to remind you, that the Liaoning is a training carrier? That means overseas combat deployment is going to be the least possible opportunity.
