I am not the person who connected hull numbers with carrier type projects. Other people in this forum did it. The better way is to wait until it is official or clearly visible.
Again, there is no evidence that "CV-18" connects to "002" except your personal opinion. So there is no "should" in any of this. I can easily use "CV-18" to refer to China's third carrier because there is no reason to believe the third carrier will have any other hull designation, regardless of what class it is in.
Of course, you can do what you want. I wanted to try just about consistency.
By the time China starts building its first cat equipped flattop it will have vastly more experience with aircraft carriers than the USSR had when starting to build Ulyanovsk let alone when designing Oryol. So we can be very sure that China will not build a clone of either.
Which is pretty much what I was saying. I was simply replying to an earlier post where a member indicated that it would represent that design, and (as with you) I simply do not believe it will. It will be, IMHO, uniquely Chinese.
