Moreover, from recent livestreams and podcasts from Shilao and co.
It turns out that the construction of both 001 and 002 was quite beneficial for the PLAN, not only for the experience and planning of their construction and fitting out, but they also serve really well just as training for carrier pilots (training carrier pilots turned out to not be a trivial deal, which the PLA thought it would be).
And well, they can still fight in war as well, even if they are inferior to the 003 and other catapult carriers, but they are still carriers that can launch J15s.
That entire livestream was quite informative. It seemed to me that China really rolled a lot of 5 or 6s in how it closed the gap with USN from when it decided on taking the plunge in 2004 to now. I remember reading a former USN officer saying that China had managed compress 100 years of USN carrier op lessons into 10 years. That's clearly an exaggeration, but it gives an idea of how USN views the advancements in Chinese carrier operations since 2012.
1) It got the most recently constructed CV from Soviet Union and paid very little for it. When CV-16 first joined service, I heard a lot of Western analysts calling Admiral K class a terrible design to copy. Well, guess what? Not everyone gets access to decades of US experience in designing Aircraft carriers. The fact that China got Varyag (with its power plant in tact) was a huge coup and they were able to do some small modifications to make it a pretty reasonable entry level carrier. The only other option they had were Spanish shipyard offers of 30k sized carrier back in the 90s. I wouldn't say China took advantage of Ukraine, but it was fortunate that such a ship was available for them to try out.
2) Apparently, there was big discussions going on inside China about whether to build a whole new carrier based on Varyag as the first carrier or modifying Varyag to put it into service. Again, a lot of western analysts said that it made perfect sense for China to put Varyag into service as a training carrier. Even so, it wasn't an obvious choice for PLAN brass, who did not have full knowledge of the difficult of carrier op. it turned out, the choice of modifying Varyag into CV-16 was entirely correct. Putting CV-16 into service sooner allowed them to start training at the sea much sooner than if they had decided to build a new carrier from the get go. And they found that carrier ops is really hard. I think Shilao's podcast said that CV-16 only believed it achieved operational status in 2019 or even more recent than that when it comes to high tempo carrier operations.
3) The decision to build a Type 002 in CV-17 before proceeding to Type 003 looks to be correct too. There is a whole new lesson to be learnt about building a new carrier from scratch that had to be learned before they can proceed to a more complicated design in Type 003. Given how smoothly Type 002/003 projects have progressed, I would say these were correct decisions. Otherwise, they'd still need a Type 003 to test out EMAL catapult.
4) The full indigenization of flankers + availability of T-10K prototype meant they were able to develop J-15s pretty smoothly. I think it's a testament to China/Russia relationship that Russia did not throw a fit at China for not buying Su-33s. As it turned out, Shilao/Yankee have said several times that Su-33 wasn't fully developed as a naval fighter. SAC had to really test and sort through many issues for J-15 to be where it is. If they had chosen to buy Su-33 or was not indigenizing flankers or picked naval J-10, I don't think it would have turned out as well. As things stand, J-15 is a great platform to support J-35.
5) Having SAC first work on J-15 and FC-31 prototype meant they are ideally prepared for J-35.
6) I didn't realize this but, they got extremely lucky with JL-9H. PLAN had not planned or paid for JL-9H development. Someone that was retired went out of his way to suggest GAIC to develop a naval version of JL-9 in case PLAN needed a trainer naval. GAIC found 100 million RMB to do the development (a lot of money for GAIC). And when PLAN realized J-15S two seater development would've cut too much money, they were happy that the much cheaper JL-9H option was available.
7) Somehow, they were able to complete EMAL development/testing almost as the same time as steam catapult, which allowed them to catch up to USN in catapult technology. Even now, Ford class is still struggling with it.
8) GWOT forced very high level of attrition/early retirement on carrier aircraft which forced USN to place very larger orders of Super hornets and very few F-35Cs. As a result, Type 003 and follow on carriers are likely to have a big 5th generation aircraft advantage over its USN counterpart (by pure numbers).
I might be missing a few, but a lot of things have gone right for PLAN.
