I doubt the govt or PLAN will officially confirm "yes the thing you're seeing at DL's drydock is our first indigenous carrier". But they have already confirmed they're working on their first indigenous carrier which is probably all we'll get for the next few years in terms of official announcements.
Personally I think it is just a matter of time to wait for more pictures of the drydock for confirmation. The rumours which we've known for the last year or two is that DL is building the first indigenous carrier and we had news of module fabrication a while ago too, so these pictures are lending evidence to the suspicions more than anything.
I doubt it is a LHD (DL was never going to build LHDs, that's probably the job for HDZH), so unless we're misidentifying some other large non military ship and misidentifying the drydock location, and/or this is all a coordinated hoax by multiple independent entities on the BBS.... I'd say the likelihood is immensely high that this is 001A.
In fact, I'd say the testimony of multiple individuals who were able to get photos and/or describe what they had seen at the drydock is probably the most helpful evidence so far.
Either way it'll probably be a matter of weeks, or a few months at most for us to put the nail in this coffin.
So to answer jkliz, I'd say it is highly likely that what we're seeing is the first indigenous carrier. PLA watching is never about the photos alone, but integrating the previous rumours together with a projected timescale and seeing if it bounces. In this case I think the time works out neatly with what we've known before.
