Chinese Navy Hospital Ship Starts Humanitarian Mission To South Pacific, Latin America
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One of China’s Type 920-class hospital ships, the recently commissioned Silk Road Ark (867), recently started the Mission Harmony 2025 humanitarian mission, which will take the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) hospital ship to unfamiliar waters in the South Pacific, Eastern Pacific, and the Caribbean.
The PLAN’s oft-overlooked fleet of hospital ships plays an important role in China’s peacetime military diplomacy and the country’s regional humanitarian assistance and disaster relief capabilities more generally. Observers should note that the PLAN’s hospital ships are also important for the PLA’s own purposes, not least in a Taiwan invasion scenario in which the rapid provision of medical care will play a pivotal role in preventing the many wounded from joining what is likely to be a very long list of fatalities. The PLAN’s hospital ships are also likely to play some role in fleet operations as the PLAN’s fast-modernizing surface fleet becomes increasingly accustomed to operating in the Philippine Sea in preparation for high-intensity naval operations against the United States Navy. The ongoing construction of additional hospital ships, including the Silk Road Ark (867), is indicative of where Beijing’s priorities lie.
The recently initiated deployment of the Silk Road Ark (867) will result in a rare PLAN forway into the Eastern Pacific and the Caribbean. Ordinarily, the PLA surface ships, namely satellite tracking ships—which are notably not part of the PLAN fleet—rarely operate east of the International Date Line. Humanitarian missions, however, amount to a notable exception and will result in the presence of a Chinese government-owned vessel in unfamiliar waters. Curiously, Chinese state media report that the Silk Road Ark will visit twelve countries but only list ten—Nauru, Fiji, Tonga, Mexico, Jamaica, Barbados, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and Papua New Guinea. It remains to be seen what the other two countries/ports of call will be—Cuba is a curious omission given multiple scheduled stops in the Caribbean.