China's early carrier experience needs the right comparison

Is China's carrier force comparable to the leading carrier navies of the 1920s?

Not yet in institutional experience. Smaller navies beginning carrier aviation in the late 1940s offer a closer comparison.

A direct comparison with the 1920s Royal Navy, US Navy, or Imperial Japanese Navy gives China too much institutional experience because those services already had years of carrier work and multiple ships. The Dutch, Australian, and Canadian carrier forces of the late 1940s offer more useful analogues for an organization beginning sustained naval aviation. The comparison concerns institutional stage rather than identical technology or strategic circumstances. It separates the visible sophistication of a modern ship from the accumulated experience of a mature carrier service.