10 Yuan China 1st aircraft carrier Liaoning

The Liaoning entered service with the People's Liberation Army Navy in September 2012, commissioned just months before this coin was issued. She began as the Soviet Kuznetsov-class carrier Varyag, laid down in Nikolayev in 1985 and left structurally incomplete when the USSR collapsed. Ukraine inherited the hulk, stripped it of weapons and engines, and eventually sold it in 1998 to a Macau-based company nominally planning a floating casino — a cover story few believed. China towed her through the Bosphorus in 2001 after protracted negotiations with Turkey.

The coin was struck at the Shenyang Mint in the same year as commissioning, making it one of the faster official commemorative responses to a military event in the modern Chinese series.