Wouldn't the initial few step would be to gear towards some sort of sustained sortie and night operations? Is there any evidence that this is happening? Inserting a CVG into an area without such capabilities would just be presence.
I imagine that it goes without saying, that the professor's suggestion for sending Liaoning to the SCS would be dependent on the ship and its aircrew reaching a certain state of operational readiness.
If you're asking what state of operational readiness Liaoning is at right now, we obviously have no answer for that. The last pictures and videos received were from a few months ago and even from those we do not know if they deliberately kept out certain operations or training that they might have wanted to hide.
But overall I think this entire article has been misconstrued.
I think the professor is simply saying that the SCS will remain an area of interest for the Chinese Navy and its vessels, including its aircraft carrier(s), and that aircraft carriers may potentially be sent to the SCS in response to US challenges in the future.
The article also mentions at the beginning "once the second ship is fully operational"). Using common sense, one would understand that by the time 001A is fully operational then CV16 Liaoning would also have been fully operational for an even longer amount of time.
Even if the "second ship is fully operational" part of the article was left out, it would be sensible for us to assume that the professor would've meant that a carrier would only be deployed if the carrier was at a state of acceptable rediness.
He's obviously not advocating the Navy send Liaoning into the SCS without the crew and airwing and escorts reaching a state of acceptable readiness, in an unprovoked manner. That would be stupid and illogical.
Let's give the guy the benefit of doubt.