Chinese navy has made great progress in equipment, with new aircraft carrier deployed in service. The article explores patterns of naming PLA naval ships.
Birth of the navy
The PLA Navy was born under the East China Military Command in Baimamiao Town, in Jiangsu’s Taizhou City, on April 23, 1949. Zhang Aiping was the first commander and political commissar. The ships came from various sources and the administration was a mess. No regulations existed for naming vessels. The biggest ships were frigates. Most ships were named after big or medium-sized Chinese cities, such as Nanchang, Luoyang, Changsha, Shenyang, Nanning and Hui'an. The Nanchang had been a Japanese ship seized by the KMT navy and renamed Changzhi. It was later sunk in the civil war. The PLA salvaged it and renamed it Nanchang. It remained in service until the 1980s.
The Luoyang had been an Australian minesweeper before it became a Hong Kong commercial ship. The PLA Navy bought it, refitted it as a frigate and renamed it.
Some gunboats were named after revolutionary bases such as Ruijin, Zaozhuang, Zunyi and Xingguo; some after rivers like Changjiang, Zhujiang, Xiangjiang and Nenjiang; and some after cities that were liberated early in the civil war like Yancheng and Dezhou.
After the China-USSR alliance was formed, the PLA Navy received and copied some Soviet ships. Some of these were named after famous industrial cities in north China like Anshan, Fushun, Changchun and Taiyuan. Submarines bought from the Soviet Union were given names such as New China or National Defense along with numbers; for example, an S-class submarine was named New China 12 and an M-class submarine National Defense 21. Most fast vessels were named after their pennant numbers, like 601/611 escort boat, P-6 torpedo boat, and 281/282 submarine chaser.
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