China’s newest and biggest aircraft carrier has launched sea trials, in a major step forward for Beijing’s naval power.

Called Fujian, the vessel is the Communist state’s third aircraft carrier, but the first to be both designed and manufactured domestically.

Its development has become a central tenet of President Xi Jinping’s bid to dominate the region militarily and build a “blue-water” navy to project Chinese power internationally – the country aims to have six carriers by 2035.

Only the United States, with 11 aircraft carriers and nine aircraft-carrying amphibious assault ships, has more of the vessels than China.

According to Xinhua state media, the Fujian’s maiden voyage – which launched from Shanghai’s Jiangnan Shipyard on Wednesday morning – will “primarily test the reliability and stability of the aircraft carrier’s propulsion and electrical systems”.

China Daily added that the carrier is among “the most important military hardware” currently being developed by the country.

Featuring a full-length, flat flight deck and electromagnetic (EMALS) catapults that allow the carrier to launch aircraft more regularly, the ship is larger and more advanced than the two carriers China currently deploys. These are the Shandong, which was commissioned in late 2019, and the Liaoning, which China purchased from Ukraine second-hand in 1998 and retrofitted.

It will be at least a year before tests are completed and the Fujian, named after the Chinese province opposite Taiwan, will be put into active service. The only other aircraft carrier in the world with electromagnet catapults - the USS Gerald R Ford - was deployed in 2022, five years after it was commissioned.

The latest Fujian trials come as tensions in the disputed South China Sea are escalating.

On Tuesday, The Telegraph witnessed the intimidation tactics used by Beijing to prevent Filipino authorities from accessing the Scarborough Shoal, a valuable fishing territory that falls within the Philippines’s borders, but China now lays claim to.

The chain of reefs and rocks covering 58 sq miles has become a major flashpoint since an international tribunal invalidated China’s claim to sovereignty of the shoal in 2016. But Beijing has not recognised the ruling, and has dispatched a range of ships in an attempt to assert control.