Naval history of China


The naval history of China dates back thousands of years, with archives existing since the late Spring and Autumn period about the ancient navy of China and the various ship types used in war. China was the leading maritime power in the years 1400–1433, when Chinese shipbuilders began to build massive ocean-going junks. In modern times, the current People's Republic of China and Taiwanese governments continue to maintain standing navies through the People's Liberation Army Navy and the Republic of China Navy, respectively.

History

Early coastal maritime endeavours

The Han dynasty established the first independent naval force in China, the Tower Ship Navy.
Although numerous naval battles took place before the 12th century, such as the large-scale Three Kingdoms Battle of Chibi in the year 208, it was during the Song Dynasty that the Chinese established a permanent, standing navy in 1132. At its height by the late 12th century there were 20 squadrons of some 52,000 marines, with the admiral's headquarters at Dinghai, while the main base remained closer to modern Shanghai. The establishment of the permanent navy during the Song period came out of the need to defend against the Jurchens, who had overrun the northern half of China, and to escort merchant fleets entering the South East Pacific and Indian Ocean on long trade missions abroad to the Hindu, Islamic, and East African spheres of the world. However, considering China was a country which was for a long time menaced by land-based nomadic tribes such as the Xiongnu, Göktürks, Mongols, the navy was always seen as an adjunct rather than an important military force. By the 1516th centuries China's canal system and internal economy were sufficiently developed to nullify the need for the Pacific fleet, which was scuttled when conservative Confucianists gained power in the court and began a policy of introspection. After the First and Second Opium Wars, which shook up the generals of the Qing dynasty, the government attached greater importance to the navy.
junk ship, 13th century; Chinese ships of the Song period featured hulls with watertight compartments.
When the British fleet encountered the Chinese during the First Opium War, their officers noted the appearance of paddle-wheel boats among the Chinese fleet, which they took to be copies of a Western design. Paddle-wheel boats were actually developed by the Chinese independently in the 5th-6th centuries, only a century after their first surviving mention in Roman sources, though that method of propulsion had been abandoned for many centuries and only recently reintroduced before the war. Numerous other innovations were present in Chinese vessels during the Middle Ages that had not yet been adopted by the Western and Islamic worlds, some of which were documented by Marco Polo but were not adopted by other navies until the 18th century, when the British successfully incorporated them into ship designs. For example, medieval Chinese hulls were split into bulkhead sections so that a hull rupture only flooded a fraction of the ship and did not necessarily sink it. This was described in the book of the Song Dynasty maritime author Zhu Yu, the Pingzhou Table Talks of 1119 AD. Along with the innovations described in Zhu's book, there were many other improvements to nautical technology in the medieval Song period. These included crossbeams bracing the ribs of ships to strengthen them, rudders that could be raised or lowered to allow ships to travel in a wider range of water depths, and the teeth of anchors arranged circularly instead of in one direction, "making them more reliable". Junks also had their sails staggered by wooden poles so that the crew could raise and lower them with ropes from the deck, like window blinds, without having to climb around and tie or untie various ropes every time the ship needed to turn or adjust speed.
A significant naval battle was the Battle of Lake Poyang from August 30 to October 4 of the year 1363 AD, a battle which cemented the success of Zhu Yuanzhang in founding the Ming Dynasty. However, the Chinese fleet shrank tremendously after its military/tributary/exploratory functions in the early 15th century were deemed too expensive and it became primarily a police force on routes like the Grand Canal. Ships like the juggernauts of Zheng He's "treasure fleet," which dwarfed the largest Portuguese ships of the era by several times, were discontinued, and the junk became the predominant Chinese vessel until the country's relatively recent naval revival.

Imperial Chinese Navy

There were four fleets of the Imperial Chinese Navy:
In 1865, the Jiangnan Shipyard was established.
In 1874, a Japanese incursion into Taiwan exposed the vulnerability of China at sea. A proposal was made to establish three modern coastal fleets: the Northern Sea or Beiyang Fleet, to defend the Yellow Sea, the Southern Sea or Nanyang Fleet, to defend the East China Sea, and the Canton Sea or Yueyang Fleet, to defend the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. The Beiyang Fleet, with a remit to defend the section of coastline closest to the capital Beijing, was prioritised.
A series of warships were ordered from Britain and Germany in the late 1870s, and naval bases were built at Port Arthur and Weihaiwei. The first British-built ships were delivered in 1881, and the Beiyang Fleet was formally established in 1888. In 1894 the Beiyang Fleet was on paper the strongest navy in Asia at the time. However, it was largely lost during the First Sino-Japanese War in the Battle of the Yalu RIver. Although the Zhenyuan and Dingyuan modern batttleships were impervious to Japanese fire, they were unable to sink a single ship and all eight cruisers were lost. The battle displayed once again that the modernisation efforts of China were far inferior to the Meiji Restoration. The Nanyang Fleet was also established in 1875, and grew with mostly domestically built warships and a small number of acquisitions from Britain and Germany.
The Nanyang Fleet fought in the Sino-French War, performing somewhat poorly against the French in all engagements.
The separate Fujian and Guangdong fleets became part of the Imperial navy after 1875. The Fujian Fleet was almost annihilated during the Sino-French War, and was only able to acquire two new ships thereafter. By 1891, due to budget cuts, the Fujian Fleet was barely a viable fleet. The Guangdong Fleet was established in the late 1860s and based at Whampoa, in Canton. Ships from the Guangdong Fleet toured the South China Sea in 1909 as a demonstration of Chinese control over the sea.
After the First Sino-Japanese War, Zhang Zhidong established a river-based fleet in Hubei.
In 1909, the remnants of the Beiyang, Nanyang, Guangdong and Fujian Fleets, together with the Hubei fleet, were merged, and re-organised as the Sea Fleet and the River Fleet.
In 1911, Sa Zhenbing became the Minister of Navy of the Great Qing.
One of the new ships delivered after the war with Japan, the cruiser Hai Chi, in 1911 became the first vessel flying the Yellow Dragon Flag to arrive in American waters, visiting New York City as part of a tour.

Modern

The Republic of China Navy is the navy of the Republic of China, which was established after the overthrow of the Qing dynasty. Liu Guanxiong, a former Qing dynasty admiral, became the first Minister of Navy of the Republic of China. During the period of warlordism that scarred China in the 1920s and 1930s the ROCN remained loyal to the Kuomintang government of Sun Yat-sen instead of the warlord government in Beijing which fell to the nationalist government in the 1928 northern campaign and between the civil war with the Communist Party and 1937 Japanese invasion of Northeast China. During that time and throughout World War II, the ROCN concentrated mainly on riverine warfare as the poorly equipped ROCN was not a match to Imperial Japanese Navy over ocean or coast.
, North Sea Fleet headquarters parading with Type-56 carbines in 2000 for a visiting U.S. Navy delegation.
The People's Liberation Army Navy was established in 1950 for the People's Republic of China. The PLAN can trace its lineage to naval units fighting during the Chinese Civil War and was established in September 1950. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, the Soviet Union provided assistance to the PLAN in the form of naval advisers and export of equipment and technology. Until the late 1980s, the PLAN was largely a riverine and littoral force. However, by the 1990s, following the fall of the Soviet Union and a shift towards a more forward-oriented foreign and security policy, the leaders of the Chinese military were freed from worrying over land border disputes, and instead turned their attention towards the seas. This led to the development of the People's Liberation Army Navy into a green-water navy by 2009. Before the 1990s the PLAN had traditionally played a subordinate role to the People's Liberation Army Ground Force.

Literature

Early literature

One of the oldest known Chinese books written on naval matters was the Yuejueshu of 52 AD, attributed to the Han Dynasty scholar Yuan Kang. Many passages of Yuan Kang's book were rewritten and published in Li Fang's Imperial Reader of the Taiping Era, compiled in 983. The preserved written passages of Yuan Kang's book were again featured in the Yuanjian Leihan encyclopedia, edited and compiled by Zhang Ying in 1701 during the Qing Dynasty.
Yuan Kang's book listed various water crafts that were used for war, including one that was used primarily for ramming like Greco-Roman triremes. These "classes" of ships were the great wing, the little wing, the stomach striker, the castle ship, and the bridge ship. These were listed in the Yuejueshu as a written dialogue between King Helü of Wu and Wu Zixu. The Wu Kingdom's Navy is regarded as the origin of the first Chinese Navy which consisted of different ships for specific purposes. Wu Zixu stated:

Nowadays in training naval forces we use the tactics of land forces for the best effect. Thus great wing ships correspond to the army's heavy chariots, little wing ships to light chariots, stomach strikers to battering rams, castle ships to mobile assault towers, and bridge ships to light cavalry.

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Ramming vessels were also attested to in other Chinese documents, including the Shi Ming dictionary of c. 100 AD written by Liu Xi. The Chinese also used a large iron t-shaped hook connected to a spar to pin retreating ships down, as described in the Mozi book compiled in the 4th century BC. This was discussed in a dialogue between Mozi and Lu Ban in 445 BC, as the hook-and-spar technique made standard on all Chu warships was given as the reason why the Yue navy lost in battle to Chu.
The rebellion of Gongsun Shu in Sichuan province against the re-established Han Dynasty during the year 33 AD was recorded in the Book of Later Han, compiled by Fan Ye in the 5th century. Gongsun sent a naval force of some twenty to thirty thousand soldiers down the Yangtze River to attack the position of the Han commander Cen Peng. After Cen Peng defeated several of Gongsun's officers, Gongsun had a long floating pontoon bridge constructed across the Yangtze with fortified posts on it, protected further by a boom, as well as erecting forts on the river bank to provide further missile fire at another angle. Cen Peng was unable to break through this barrier and barrage of missile fire, until he equipped his navy with castle ships, rowed assault vessels, and 'colliding swoopers' used for ramming in a fleet of several thousand vessels and quelled Gongsun's rebellion.
encyclopedia published in 1726.
The 'castle ship' design described by Yuan Kang saw continued use in Chinese naval battles after the Han period. Confronting the navy of the Chen Dynasty on the Yangtze River, Emperor Wen of Sui employed an enormous naval force of thousands of ships and 518,000 soldiers stationed along the Yangtze. The largest of these ships had five layered decks, could hold 800 passengers, and each ship was fitted with six 50 ft. long booms that were used to swing and damage enemy ships, along with the ability of pinning them down.

Types of ship Tang era

During the Chinese Tang Dynasty there were some famous naval engagements, such as the Tang-Silla victory over the Korean kingdom of Baekje and Yamato Japanese forces in the Battle of Baekgang in 663. Tang Dynasty literature on naval warfare and ship design became more nuanced and complex. In his Taipai Yinjing of 759 AD, Li Quan gave descriptions for several types of naval ships in his day. Not represented here, of course, is the paddle-wheel crafts innovated by the Tang Prince Li Gao more than a decade later in 784 AD. Paddle-wheel craft would continue to hold an important place in the Chinese navy. Along with gunpowder bombs, paddle-wheel craft were a significant reason for the success in the later Song Dynasty naval victory of the Battle of Caishi in the year 1161 AD during the Jin–Song wars.

Covered swoopers

Combat junks

Flying barques

Patrol boats

Sea hawks

Naval endeavours by era

[Spring and Autumn Period]

The Qing established a sea defence force of 7 fleets across 4 sea zones. Due to rebellions in the late 18th century the navy was neglected and declined, ultimately suffering defeat in the opium wars.
The modern Imperial Chinese Navy was established in 1875, prompted by a Japanese incursion into Taiwan that exposed the vulnerability of the existing, pre-modern Chinese navy. Numerous modern ships equipped with Krupp guns, electricity, gatling guns, torpedoes, and other modern weapons were acquired by the Qing dynasty from western powers. They were manned by western trained Chinese officers.

Citations