Type 055 weighs around 13,000 tonnes when fully fitted out with its weapon systems and commissioned, making it the country’s largest destroyer, Li Jie, a researcher with the PLA Naval Military Academic Research Institute, said in a February article on the PLA’s website. China's new type of domestically-built destroyer, a 10,000-tonne warship, is seen during its launching ceremony at the Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai, China June 28, 2017. REUTERS/China Stringer Network

The 10,000-tonne warship was launched at the Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai, the official Xinhua news agency said, making it the first of the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s “new generation” destroyers. “Equipped with new types of air defense, anti-missile, anti-ship and anti-submarine weapon systems, the new destroyer has strong capabilities of information detection, air and missile defense, and maritime target attacking,” the MoD notes in a statement. “The Type 055 destroyer will greatly enhance the PLA Navy's combat capability in the open sea, and ground attack capability, as its higher tonnage will enable it to be more versatile,” military expert Song Zhongping said, as cited by the Global Times newspaper. This is the first exercise being carried out by Liaoning, a refurbished aircraft carrier, built from the hull of a Soviet ship bought from Ukraine after China had launched a home-made carrier in April this year. China’s increasingly powerful navy has launched its most advanced domestically-produced destroyer at a time of rising competition with other naval powers such as the United States, Japan and India. China claims almost all the South China Sea, believed to have huge deposits of oil and gas, through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year, and has been building up military facilities like runways on the islands it controls.
China's state-run Global Times newspaper reports the launching of the first Type 055 destroyer, a 10,000-ton "new generation" warship, at the Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai.