This video is the 2nd episode of my series dedicated to the history of the Chinese pursuit of sea-based air power. It traces the actual acquisition of China's first aircraft carrier — not the version that circulated publicly for two decades, but the documented one. At its centre is a multi-phase covert commercial operation involving a Macau-registered tourism company, a PLA intelligence directorate, a Hong Kong front company, and a buying team that signed the ownership documents in a Ukrainian shipyard in October 1999, then returned home to be investigated by the same state that had quietly commissioned them.
The video examines how each layer of the operation was structured, what each layer knew, and how the whole thing nearly unravelled — not through foreign interference, but through the absence of a paper trail and the departure of a single officer. It's a case study in how states manage sensitive acquisitions they cannot publicly acknowledge, and what the failure modes of that approach look like when they materialise.