China media: Indian aircraft carrier
State media are playing down any potential threat from India's new aircraft carrier, but urge China to speed up the construction of its own fleet.
India on Monday unveiled its first home-built aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, from a shipyard in southern Kerala state.
"India's indigenous research and development of submarines and aircraft carriers will still need some time to mature, and the navy's combat capability also needs to be improved. India still has a long way to go to fulfil its dream of having the 'world's second-largest navy'," concludes the Guangming Daily.
"The shockwaves in China towards the launch of India's aircraft carrier is smaller than the recent launch of Japan's quasi-aircraft carrier 'Izumo'... To the Chinese, Japan is the biggest threat from the periphery, and ordinary Chinese often will not think of India," says the Global Times.
"There is no arms race between China and India. The main impact on us from the launch of India's domestic aircraft carrier is that China's indigenous aircraft carrier plan needs to be accelerated," it adds.
However, some experts warn that India's new carrier and submarine could heighten regional tensions.
"The successive high-profile appearances of India's domestic aircraft carrier and nuclear submarine obviously have a political hand behind them. India's ambitions not only lie in the Indian Ocean, it even wants to deepen intervention in the South China Sea issue, so as to carry out strategic containment against China," Zhao Gancheng, director of the Asia-Pacific Research Centre at the Shanghai Institutes of International Studies, tells the Oriental Morning Post.
Elsewhere, the failure of authorities to tear down an "illegally built" rooftop villa, complete with a mountain and trees, on top of a block of flats in Beijing is triggering an outcry in the media and public.
The owner spent six years rebuilding his flat into a two-storey estate sprawling across the 26-storey building's entire rooftop.
The villa has been nicknamed the "Hanging Gardens of Beijing" and "Most Awesome Illegal Construction". Neighbours have complained for years about constant construction noise, leaking water and safety risks, however.
"What is even more puzzling is that the urban management department posted a notice requesting a meeting in his doorway for six years. If this patient law enforcement attitude and civilized law enforcement method was used on street hawkers, nothing would be better!" quips a Guangzhou Daily commentary.
Authorities in Haidian district on Monday finally ordered the rooftop structure to be demolished within 15 days.
"One important reason for a prevailing trend of illegal construction is selective enforcement. In the face of people with power and connections, some law enforcers not only recoil but sometimes act as a protective umbrella," comments well-known blogger Han Han in The Beijing News.
Local governments are also under fire for getting round a ban on the construction of extravagant luxury offices by renaming them as "business centres" or "conference centres".
"If a government does not hang up a sign, this may mean that the people it serves may not even be able to find the doorway to government buildings. This is clearly contrary to political ethics and detrimental to the integrity of those in power, comments the Dahe Daily.
Sina news portal even features one county government building in Hunan province that is modelled on the White House in Washington DC.