Late last month, the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) accepted its first purpose-built floating hospital, the 10,000-ton "Ship 866." While seemingly innocuous on the surface, ships like this are windows into an evolving military strategy for an emerging world power. Hospital ships can be used for a wide range of missions, from supporting full-scale amphibious assaults against heavily defended targets, to humanitarian "soft-power" expeditions winning hearts and minds.
The question is: what is Ship 866 intended for? I asked two leading naval analysts for a new piece in World Politics Review.
It's for soft power, contends Bob Work, from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He says Ship 866 has its roots in the 2004 tsunami. Many world powers sent ships to help out in the aftermath of the storm, which killed more than 200,000 people in countries bordering the Indian Ocean. But not China: the PLAN didn't have any ships capable of assisting. "The tsunami embarrassed them," he says. "The Chinese respond to embarrassments in very focused ways." In this case by building a hospital ship.
John Pike from Globalsecurity.org disagrees. He says Ship 866 is probably intended to support the growing Chinese amphibious fleet, which in turn is meant for enforcing China's claim to South China Sea oil reserves. It's a far cry from humanitarian soft-power missions.
Of course, intentions are only intentions. Regardless of the original motive, the PLAN now has a ship capable of both humanitarian missions and supporting amphibious assaults. The Chinese are still decades from matching the U.S. Navy's huge amphibious and humanitarian fleet, but it's a start.
[Photo: Chinese Internet]
