Beijing has again let military enthusiasts publicise new PLA hardware - this time revealing that its J-15 fighter jet, which will be based on the mainland's first aircraft carrier, has passed factory tests and entered technical flight testing.
The latest photos of the J-15 were first uploaded by internet users on mainland military forums on Sunday. They were picked up by the English-language version of Global Times - a newspaper under People's Daily - on Monday, and by its Chinese-language version yesterday.
Just two weeks ago, Xinhua posted 20 high-resolution pictures from unofficial military websites to confirm that the country's first aircraft carrier, the Varyag, a 67,500-tonne Admiral Kuznetsov-class carrier bought at auction in Ukraine in 1998, had almost been completed after more than a decade of renovations.
And in December, photographs and information posted by mainland military enthusiasts revealed the first flight test of the new generation J-20 stealth fighter jet.
The photos of the PLA Navy's 'flying shark' J-15 were taken outside the airfield of the No112 factory of Shenyang Aircraft Industry Corporation, a subsidiary of Aviation Industry Corporation of China.
Andrei Chang, chief editor of the Canadian-based Kanwa Asian Defence Monthly, who has monitored the mainland's aircraft carrier project for 20 years, said that the folding wings, shortened tail cone and bulked-up landing gear it needs to serve on an aircraft carrier were copied from the Russian Su-33.
