A sail-past featuring some of the navy's most modern craft and ships from other nations is being planned, Friday's Global Times newspaper said, citing the commander of the east China fleet, Adm. Xu Hongmeng.
The report did not say exactly where the sail-past would happen or when, although the navy's founding anniversary officially falls on April 23. The east China fleet is based in Shanghai, while many of the navy's most advanced craft are based at the northern fleet headquarters in Qingdao, about 310 miles (500 kilometers) southeast of Beijing.
Global Times quoted Xu as saying that China was in need of a carrier.
"Both technologically and economically, China already has the capacity to build a carrier," Xu said.
Beijing has been researching an aircraft carrier for years, having bought and towed to China a mothballed Russian carrier, the Varyag, in 1998. The PLA is also rumored to have purchased four carrier landing systems and up to 50 Russian Su-33 carrier-based aircraft.
Strategically, a carrier is seen mainly as a deterrent to U.S. intervention in a conflict over Taiwan, although Chinese experts say it would mainly serve to police the 1.16 million square miles (3 million square kilometers) of sea claimed by Beijing as its maritime territory.
Long neglected in favor of the army and air force, the 255,000-member People's Liberation Army Navy has taken on an increasingly prominent role in recent years as the country's sea-borne trade expands and Beijing moves to assert its offshore claims and stymie moves by Taiwan toward formal independence.