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Chinese Ship Names

With the approval of the Central Military Commission, the Chinese Navy announced the "Navy Ship Naming Regulations" on November 18, 1978. The regulations stipulate the naming organs, naming rules and related regulations for various types of ships. On July 10, 1986, the Navy supplemented and revised the Navy Ship Naming Regulations.

According to the Regulations, the naming of ships must follow the following principles:

• Different from the names of ships in other countries and regions in the world
• The name of the ship that is different from the domestic commercial use
• Strong and rational, easy to remember
• The sound is clear and not easy to confuse each other
• The name is loud and full of meaning
• Being able to reflect the dignity of the country
• It can reflect the long history and culture of the Chinese nation
• Being able to withstand the test of history, using it for a long time, and meeting the needs of equipment development for a long time

When a newly-built or newly-received ship is listed or renamed, the leading authority authorized to grant the name shall officially grant the ship's name to the ship's name and issue the "Certificate of Warship Name". The ship shall hold a naming ceremony in accordance with the provisions of the "Ship Order"; and generally do not change the name while in service. When the ship is retired, its ship's name will be cancelled by the granting authority and will not be awarded to the subsequent ship. The authority for the naming of specific ships depends on the importance of the ship:

• the naming of the aircraft carrier will be decided by the chairman of the Central Military Commission according to the requirements of the Chinese Navy Ship Naming Regulations.
• major ships ( battleships, cruisers) and nuclear submarines are named by the General Staff;
• second level (destroyer, frigate, submarine, large landing ship) and the lower level of the ship are named by the Navy Command.

The specific naming convention is:

• Aircraft carriers, battleships, and cruisers are named after the administrative province (district) or region; Such as: "Liaoning" aircraft carrier
• Destroyers are named after large and medium cities; In practice, destroyers are generally named after provincial capitals or sub-provincial cities, such as: "Shenyang" destroyer. However, there are 28 provincial capital cities and 5 sub-provincial cities outside the provincial capital, for a total of 33. But by mid-2019 the destroyers currently under construction included at least four 052D and four 055 ships, and the number of names for the ships was seriously insufficient. In fact, it is said that the 13th and 14th 052Ds were named after cities outside the provincial and sub-provincial cities.
• Frigates are named after prefecture-level city "middle and small cities", such as: "Dongguan" frigate
• Ballistic missile nuclear submarine: named after the "Long March" plus serial number, such as "Long March" No. 6
• Attack-type nuclear submarine: Named after the "Long March" plus serial number, such as: "Long March" No. 4
• Conventional missile submarine: Named after the "expedition" plus serial number, such as: "Expedition" No. 23
• Conventional torpedo submarine: named after the "Great Wall" plus serial number, such as: "Great Wall" No. 18 Guard boat: named after the "county", such as the "Panyu" escort boat
• minesweeper is named after “county, state”, such as the "Huoqiu" minesweeper;
• dock landing ship and the tank landing ship are named after a “mountain”, such as: "Jinggangshan" landing ship;
• infantry landing ship is named after a "river", such as: "Yellow River" landing ship;
• Integrated supply ship: named after "lake", such as: "Thousand Island Lake" supply ship
• Electronic reconnaissance ship: named after "star", such as: "Sirius" electronic reconnaissance ship
• Submarine Support Ship : named after "island", such as Ocean Island, Liugong Island, Long Island, etc.
• Training ship, weapon test ship: named after the name of the person, such as: "Zhenghe" ocean-going comprehensive training ship
• auxiliary vessels are named after the name indicating the sea area and nature. Auxiliary ships in PLAN service are designated by a combination of two Chinese characters followed by three-digit number. The second Chinese character is related to the mission - hence Jiu, meaning rescue in Chinese, applies to rescue and salvage ships. The first Chinese character denotes which fleet the ship is service with, with East (Dong) for East Sea Fleet, North (Bei) for North Sea Fleet, and South (Nan) for South Sea Fleet.

The award of the naval vessel name must be strictly divided by region. The Navy stipulated the naming jurisdiction of the three major fleets:

• The Beihai Fleet jurisdiction is named after the geographical names of 14 provinces (Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Henan) in North China, Northeast China and Northwest China;
• The East China Sea Fleet jurisdiction is named after the geographical names of 7 provinces and cities in East China and Xinjiang Autonomous Region (Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hubei, Xinjiang);
• The South China Sea Fleet area is named after the names of the provinces of South China and the southwestern provinces of Hunan (Guangdong, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Yunnan, and Tibet).

Due to the speed of launching new ships, naming after cities is not enough. Even the current retirement of old ships, such as the Jiujiang ship, is still a fortune. According to statistics, by 2019 there were currently 7 055 and 7 052D (15 ~ 21 ships just launched) waiting to be named. The large and medium-sized cities are in short supply. Ship were going into the water too fast, even with the accelerated retirement of older ships.

Ship types such as destroyers and frigates are named after large and medium-sized cities, and some areas that have developed well but have not been rated as large and medium-sized cities have been captured by type 056 frigates. Take Quanzhou as an example. The city's development has been ranked among the top 100 in the country, but it is a small 056 frigate.

The same situation also happened in some other cities. The Nantong ship was an 054A frigate, which is also one of the top 100 cities in the country. It is fully qualified to be ranked 052D, but it had bad luck and was assigned to the 054A frigate. In fact, many large and medium-sized cities under its jurisdiction, such as Qidong and Haimen under Nantong, have good development conditions and may be upgraded. At that time, through coordination, some well-developed large and medium-sized cities can be named 055 destroyers. Or 052D destroyer.

And the same situation can have another turnaround, and that is, with the development of ship performance, although the tonnage of shipbuilding is increasing, the number is decreasing. A large number of 054A frigates have been discontinued, and the construction speed of 056 frigates has slowed. By 2019, only the 055, 052D and 056 series of destroyer ships are still under construction. And like the rumored 052E, the 054B had no exact news. Even if these ships are indeed under construction, a large number may not be built in a short period of time, which gives valuable time to adjust the ship names.