The Varyag is a Kuztenov class carrier. They are about 65K tons about Midaway size I think. They were to be succeeded by a 90-110Kton nuclear powered successor. That was cancelled, though Russia is reportedly now planning to build 6-7 updated versions of that class. Russia has learned a lot from operations with the Kuztenov and will apply many of the lessons learned there.

Regards China. A carrier is a good thing for power projection, both hard and soft and is quite useful in providing air support for...say...an amphibious landing of some sort. Carriers ae not invulnerable, but they are tough and I imagine the waters on the shoreside of Taiwan are littered with seafloor sonars and would be absolutely filled with SSKs to protect the carrier/s.

This is certainly not a wonder weapon and as you correctly point out detracts from their SSK/SSN program . However, it is not without its benefits to the PLAN, nor should it be viewed with a total lack of concern by us.

I don't know that Russia learned anything from operations of that ship, because it never reached active service.

And I disagree that this carrier would be of any significant aid to China in some sort of planned invasion of Taiwan. (Which is not militarily plausible anyway, for at least six reasons.)

Mitch, the carrier catapult is actually a technology that's VERY hard to successfully implement, and pretty much requires a large carrier to use.

When you mix the tech problems with the ship size difficulty, for most fleets a skijump is the way to go.

The problem with a ski jump is that it requires you to use STOL jets, thrust-vectoring. That's because there no way for any jet to get up to air speed in such a short distance using its engines alone. You have to vector thrust somewhat downward to compensate.

There are good sides and bad sides to thrust vectoring. One of the bad sides is that no thrust-vectored jet in the world can go supersonic, as far as I know. That's not a problem for ground support, but for air superiority it's a considerable disadvantage.

Of course, it depends enormously on who you're up against. The Brits did fine with a handful of Harriers against Argentina in the Falklands War. But against an opponent, oh, say, just picking "Taiwan" at random, there's no way such jets are going to be able to compete against Taiwan's F-16's and Mirage 2000's.

It would seem I'm not quite right. Apparently thrust vectoring is more common than I realized. The F-18 has a form of it, for example, as a means of improving maneuverability.

What I was talking about isn't the ability to redirect the thrust ten or twenty degrees, which is what that jet has. I meant the kind that the Harrier has. I'm still pretty sure that jets like that cannot go supersonic.

Not so, Steven.  The Kuznetsov embarked the Su-25 attack plane and the Su-33 (the naval variant of the Flanker, with canards for additional lift).  Neither has any thrust vectoring capabilities.

The main limitation of the skijump is that a plane generally can't operate at full load.  In some ways, though, skijumps are actually easier on the plane and pilot. 

Of course, the Kuznetsov-class is sort of an "in-between" carrier design, larger than a Brit Harrier-carrier, and smaller than the French CVNs, so one would expect it to operate differently...

Kuznetsov maybe be physically bigger than the French CVN, but it carries a smaller fixed-wing air group, which should be the whole point of a carrier.

Of course, the Russians don't call the Kuznetsov-class an aircraft carrier, but a "heavy aircraft carrying cruiser."  Really, the fighters are there to protect the ship while it gets into range to launch its shipborne missiles.

Strange by our Navy's way of thinking, but...

Wikipedia says the DeGaulle has catapults and carries 40 aircraft including helicopters.

It says the Kuznetsov carries 21 fixed wing aircraft and 20 helicopters.

But the DeGaulle displaces about 42,000 tons fully loaded, and the Kuznetsov is 66,000 tons.