Type 091 Han Class - ChangZheng / Long March

As early as 1956, even before China had produced its first diesel boat, nuclear propulsion for submarines was adopted as a national priority by Mao himself. The daunting challenge that this entailed only became fully clear after Moscow refused Beijing's explicit request to share nuclear propulsion technology, on the grounds that it would be premature for the PLAN. Foreshadowing the imminent souring of Sino-Soviet relations, Mao reacted indignantly: "We will have to build nuclear submarines even if it takes us 10,000 years." In July 1958, the Politburo approved an ambitious plan to develop nuclear propulsion and an SLBM simultaneously. The first ship of the Type 091 attack nuclear submarine was activated at the Bohai Shipyard in 1968. It was independently designed and built by the mainland without foreign aid. All parts were made in China.

During the development of the Type 091 attack nuclear submarine, it was the extraordinary period in which China experienced three years of natural disasters and ten years of cultural revolution. Although the first-generation nuclear submarines were at the highest level of underwater speed, maximum depth and other hard targets, they were basically at the same level as the nuclear submarines of the Soviet Union. However, compared with the world's advanced nuclear submarines, there is still a considerable gap in the thermal performance and reliability of nuclear power plants. In 1970, the integrated sound sonar, lightning detectors, sound trajectory, reconnaissance sonar and other underwater sound detection equipment equipped in nuclear submarines were limited by the development level and manufacturing capacity of China's defense industry at that time, and its performance was naturally less than the world's advanced nuclear submarines. The water sound detection equipment had a big gap.

In terms of the military system, the development process is even more difficult due to the turmoil in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The fish-3 torpedo (sound-guided deep-water anti-submarine torpedo) was developed in 1972 and was not finalized until October 1983. In 1984, a supplementary type test was also carried out. The fish-4 torpedo (sound-guided anti-ship torpedo) was not developed until December 1982 and was loaded for trial use. Before and after being delayed for more than ten years of research and development, the development of weapons systems that China was not optimistic was even worse, and the problem of generation difference caused China’s first-generation self-guided torpedoes to attack nuclear submarines.

Some of the first-generation nuclear submarines were also heavily delayed due to the interference of the Cultural Revolution. The deep-dive, underwater maximum speed and large-depth launching torpedo test that should have been carried out after the first boat service was completed until April-May 1988, and the time for China’s first-generation attack nuclear submarine to form combat power was also delayed. After more than ten years. The decade-long turmoil of the Cultural Revolution seriously interfered with the research and development process of China's nuclear submarines. The development delay caused by the development process and the backward performance of equipment performance made the development of China's nuclear submarines difficult in a period of time. The precious decade of ruin is also the main factor that directly caused China’s second-generation new nuclear submarine to fail to catch up with the world’s advanced nuclear submarines.

The completion of the 091-type attack nuclear submarine means that China has the strength to develop underwater nuclear submarines, and the Chinese navy has entered a new stage of possessing nuclear submarines. China has also become the fifth country in the world to have nuclear submarines. The Type 091 attack nuclear submarine solved the problem of China's nuclear submarines, improved China's defense industry research and development capabilities, improved the submarine manufacturing and repair system, and enabled Chinese submarines to navigate, shoot, air, torpedo, communications, underwater acoustics, radar and other systems. It has developed to a new level, which laid a solid material and technical foundation for China's transformation and development of conventional submarines, independent design of ballistic missile submarines and the continued renewal of attack submarines.

The 091 submarine is often cited as an example of Chinese engineering incompetence, since the submarine is viewed as one of the worst in the world. But when considered in the context of when it was built and the state of the Chinese economy and political system at that time, it is actually impressive that the submarine was ever finished. No one denies that the Chinese economy and industrial base made extraordinary strides since that time and that the level of technical expertise in China has risen dramatically.

Type 091 Han-class Nomenclature

Because it is in the experimental stage, this nuclear submarine is also a scientific research product of the National Defense Science and Technology Commission. It had not been awarded a ship number and was temporarily named as the "No. 1701" nuclear submarine. It has the meaning of "09 Project". Generally, in order to distinguish between nuclear submarines and traditional submarines, the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy is a digital difference. The "9" prefix represents nuclear power. The "3" prefix represents a traditional diesel-powered submarine. At 10 o'clock on the morning of August 1, 1974, the naming ceremony of China's first nuclear submarine delivery boat was held on the bank of Bohai Bay. The commander of the Navy, Xiao Jinguang, read the order of the Central Military Commission: It was now decided to name the boat "Long March No. 1". Listed in the naval battle sequence and awarded to the flag side.

The "Han" nomenclature is part of the US Department of Defense Defense Intelligence Agency nomenclature system. The Han ethnic group takes its name from the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220). Although the imperial government never directly controlled the villages, it did have a strong influence on popular values and culture. The average peasant could not read and was not familiar with the details of state administration or national geography, but he was aware of belonging to a group of subcontinental scope. Being Han, even for illiterate peasants, has meant conscious identification with a glorious history and a state of immense proportions. Peasant folklore and folk religion assumed that the imperial state, with an emperor and an administrative bureaucracy, was the normal order of society. The differences among regional and linguistic subgroups of Han Chinese are at least as great as those among many European nationalities. Han Chinese speak seven or eight mutually unintelligible dialects, each of which has many local subdialects. Cultural differences (cuisine, costume, and custom) are equally great.

Han ethnic unity is the result of two ancient and culturally central Chinese institutions, one of which is the written language. Chinese is written with ideographs (sometimes called characters) that represent meanings rather than sounds, and so written Chinese does not reflect the speech of its author. The disjunction between written and spoken Chinese means that a newspaper published in Beijing can be read in Shanghai or Guangzhou, although the residents of the three cities would not understand each other's speech. The other major force contributing to Han ethnic unity has been the centralized imperial state.

Much of what came to constitute China Proper was unified for the first time in 221 BC. In that year the western frontier state of Qin, the most aggressive of the Contending States, subjugated the last of its rival states. (Qin in Wade-Giles romanization is Ch'in, from which the English China derived.) Once the king of Qin consolidated his power, he took the title Shi Huangdi (First Emperor). Revolts broke out as soon as the first Qin emperor died in 210 BC. After a short civil war, a new dynasty, called Han (206 B.C.- A.D. 220), emerged with its capital at Chang'an. After 200 years, Han rule was interrupted briefly (in A.D. 9-24 by Wang Mang, a reformer), and then restored for another 200 years. The Han rulers, however, were unable to adjust to what centralization had wrought: a growing population, increasing wealth and resultant financial difficulties and rivalries, and ever-more complex political institutions. Riddled with the corruption characteristic of the dynastic cycle, by A.D. 220 the Han empire collapsed.