Andrew S. Erickson

As we enter 2024, China under Xi is steaming full speed ahead, particularly at sea. Navigate today’s troubled Indo-Pacific waters by consulting the latest version of Modern Chinese Maritime Forces—released today! This most recent iteration of the second edition includes sections for PLA Army (pp. 63–75) and PLA Air Force (pp. 76–78) watercraft; the latest data updates, including regarding nuclear-powered submarines (pp. 20–22); and a variety of new drawings. It is issued in both PDF and print versions.

This is the most comprehensive unclassified, open source PRC sea forces order of battle, data, and ship drawings available anywhere. It tracks the world’s most-numerous Navy, Coast Guard, and Maritime Militia vessels in unrivaled detail. Even just scrolling or flipping through this volume for a minute reveals the staggering scope and extent of Beijing’s sea power across the waterfront today. I simply could not be more honored to contribute a new, improved Foreword that captures China’s latest military maritime superlatives!

Manfred Meyer (edited by Larry Bond and Chris Carlson), Modern Chinese Maritime Forces, Second Edition (Admiralty Trilogy Group, 1 January 2024).

• “A compilation of ships and boats of the Chinese Navy, Coast Guard, Maritime Militia and other state authorities”
• In terms of ship numbers, each of China’s three sea forces is the world’s largest by a large margin. For the scenarios that most concern the U.S. and its regional allies, these numbers matter greatly.
  • This suggests an important conclusion: China’s numerical sea force supremacy and the corresponding need for power projection and presence to counter it effectively demonstrates the need for a substantially-sized U.S. Navy. This book can help inform related deliberations and development. All the more reason to consult this handy compendium today!
• Click here to download sample content.
• Conventionally-powered submarine coverage includes entry on the Type 039C Yuan-class SSP (p. 22) and test submarines (p. 24).
• Unique PAFMM ship silhouettes and related information on pp. 129–30! Updated to include Guangdong Province vessels.
• Check out the crane ship coverage on pp. 168–70!
• Ro-Ro ferries are featured on p. 172.
• You can order a copy here.
• The .pdf version is a living document, updated quarterly (1 January, 1 April, 1 July, 1 October of each year) with new drawings, commissionings, decommissionings, and other ship data as it becomes available.
• Single purchase includes access to future periodic updates of the volume.

RELATED PUBLICATIONS

In addition to Modern Chinese Maritime Forces, the Admiralty Trilogy Group also offers a dedicated supplement for Harpoon V regarding PLA Navy, PLA Air Force, China Coast Guard ships and aircraft as well as missiles/weapons and sensors. It is designed as a sourcebook for the game, but can also be used as an unparalleled reference (offering unrivaled coverage from 1955 to the present).

• Larry Bond, Chris Carlson, and Peter Grining, eds., China’s Navy: Ships and Aircraft of the People’s Republic of China, 1955 – 2021 (Admiralty Trilogy Group, 1 October 2021).

Admiralty Trilogy Group similarly offers dedicated sourcebooks for Harpoon V on Russia’s Navy and Military Aircraft, respectively, which likewise double as unique general references.

• Larry Bond, Chris Carlson, and Peter Grining, eds., Russia’s Navy: The Soviet and Russian Navy, 1955 – Present Day (Admiralty Trilogy Group, June 2021).
• Larry Bond, Chris Carlson, and Peter Grining, eds., Russia’s Aircraft: Russian Military Aircraft, 1955 – Present Day (Admiralty Trilogy Group, June 2021).

The Admiralty Trilogy Group (ATG) is pleased to announce that in addition to publishing games supporting its tactical naval game system, the Admiralty Trilogy, it has released its first nonfiction book. Click here to read the announcement.

Modern Chinese Maritime Forces, by Manfred Meyer, a noted artist and illustrator, provides up-to-the minute information on Chinese sea power. It lists all Chinese state vessels – not just the People’s Liberation Army Navy, but the Coast Guard, China Maritime Surveillance, China Fisheries law Enforcement Command, and many other state-sponsored agencies that carry out China’s policies at sea.

Hundreds drawings show everything from aircraft carriers to buoy tenders, accompanied by detailed information on their characteristics. Additional supporting material includes theater navy assignments for individual ships as well as descriptions of the Chinese systems for hull numbers and equipment designations. This compact book has the most complete unclassified information on Chinese state-owned vessels available anywhere.

I am honored to contribute a revised Foreword, in which I write: “Today, China’s maritime forces have the most ships of any nation. This pathbreaking book documents their force structure in unprecedented detail.”

• Andrew S. Erickson, “Foreword,” in Manfred Meyer (edited by Larry Bond and Chris Carlson), Modern Chinese Maritime Forces, Second Edition (Admiralty Trilogy Group, 1 January 2024), 3.

FOREWORD

Ships are the ultimate embodiment of maritime strategy. Today, the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s military maritime forces have the most ships of any nation. This pathbreaking book documents their force structure in unprecedented detail, making it an invaluable reference for all who seek to understand Beijing’s seaward surge and its manifold impacts and implications.

While remaining shackled to geostrategic realities on land and hemmed in by “island chains” surrounding peripheral seas, China has gone to sea dramatically in both commercial and military dimensions. It is arguably the first continental power in two millennia to become a successful hybrid land-sea power and keep that sea change on course. Powered by the world’s second-largest economy and defense budget, the PRC has gone to sea with scale, sophistication, and superlatives that no continental power ever before achieved in the modern era. Living out the dreams of previous generations to truly develop China’s “blue economy,” paramount leader Xi Jinping is personally guiding China’s transformation into a “great maritime power.” Amid European decline and American fiscal and strategic challenges, this historic transformation has the potential to end six centuries of largely Western dominance of the world’s oceans.

Rather than operating on exterior lines like such geographically advantaged sea powers as the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Australia, China must radiate sea power from interior lines in a way that prioritizes increasing control over its disputed sovereignty claims in the “Near Seas” (the Yellow, East, and South China Seas) while seeking growing influence across the Indo-Pacific region and nascent global presence. To pursue these radiating ripples of maritime interests and activities, Beijing draws on three sea forces, each the maritime component of one of its three armed forces: the (1) People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), (2) China Coast Guard (CCG), and (3) People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM). Each PRC sea force has the world’s most ships in its category. The PLAN also includes the world’s most numerous conventional submarine force. This volume tracks all three PRC sea forces in unrivaled detail.

The PRC military has the world’s largest fleet of space event support ships and oceanographic research vessels at its call, as well as global port infrastructure networks and logistics support and emerging overseas facilities. On the civilian side, PRC sea power is supplemented by the world’s largest fishing fleet, number of fishers, aquaculture and pisciculture industries, merchant marine, and marine sector overall, as well as a large nationally flagged tanker fleet. In 2023, China achieved the world’s largest commercial fleet in terms of gross tonnage in shipping capacity.

PRC ship numbers matter. First, China increasingly enjoys both quantity and quality at sea. In recent years China has transcended Cold War shipbuilding that produced crude Soviet-style, post-World War II ship designs. The PLAN, naturally China’s most advanced sea force technologically, has most dramatically replaced backward rust buckets with increasing numbers of sophisticated platforms. But the CCG and PAFMM are also modernizing significantly. Of China’s three sea forces, its coast guard has grown the most rapidly in numbers and enjoys the greatest global numerical superiority.

China’s shipbuilding juggernaut, powered by what until very recently was indisputably the world’s largest population and fastest-growing multi-trillion-dollar economy, has sustained rapid modernization of all three sea forces even as numbers of modern vessels grow substantially. Beijing’s sea forces are supported by the world’s largest shipyard infrastructure, which has achieved the largest, fastest production-capacity expansion since World War II. This is part of the largest postwar military buildup, for which Beijing leverages the world’s largest human-organizational technology acquisition and application infrastructure. China’s commercial shipbuilding juggernaut subsidizes overhead costs for construction of all three sea forces’ vessels, an impossibility for America’s military-focused shipbuilding industry. CCG construction is particularly economical and efficient: commercial off-the-shelf drivetrains and electronics, together with a lack of complex combat systems and weapons, facilitate rapid assembly with multiple units constructed simultaneously. PAFMM vessel building is even easier and cheaper.

Numbers matter for maintaining presence and influence in vital seas. Even the most advanced ship cannot be in more than one place at a time. This is particularly true regarding the growing Sino-American strategic competition where the United States is playing an away game. U.S. Coast Guard cutters are primarily focused near American waters, far from any international disputes, while the U.S. Navy is dispersed around the world. Meanwhile, all three major PRC sea forces remain focused first and foremost on the contested Near Seas and their immediate approaches, close to China’s homeland bases, and supported by “anti-navy” land-based air and missile coverage and short, interior supply lines. In those three proximate seas, Beijing has the world’s most numerous and extensive disputed island and feature claims, with the largest number of other parties; none looms larger than Taiwan. At approximately 4.7 million sq. km in area, the Near Seas are roughly half the size of mainland China and equivalent to the areas of the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean, and North Sea combined. Within this maritime area China regularly deploys sea forces far greater numerically than the size of the entire U.S. Navy.

For all these reasons, a full accounting of China’s navy, coast guard, and maritime militia has long been needed. This pioneering volume has filled that vital void by offering the most comprehensive unclassified, open-source PRC sea forces order of battle, data, and ship drawings available anywhere. Even casually perusing its pages reveals the staggering scope and extent of Beijing’s sea power today. This second edition includes new sections for PLA Army and Air Force watercraft; the latest data updates, particularly concerning nuclear-powered submarines; and a variety of new illustrations. I commend it to everyone seeking to understand how China is making such great waves on the world’s oceans, and what course it may take in coming years.

Andrew S. Erickson

China Maritime Studies Institute

Newport, Rhode Island

Modern Chinese Maritime Forces, second edition is a naval reference book by Manfred Meyer, a noted artist and illustrator. It provides up-to-the minute information on Chinese sea power. It lists all vessels in service of the Chinese government. – not just the People’s Liberation Army Navy, but the Coast Guard, China Maritime Surveillance, China Fisheries Law Enforcement Command, the Maritime Militia, and many other state-controlled agencies that carry out China’s policy at sea. This second edition add new sections covering the ships and boats used by the PLA Ground Forces and PLA Air Force. It has grown by almost 40 pages since the first edition was published in 2018.

Over 650 drawings show everything from aircraft carriers to buoy tenders, accompanied by detailed information on their characteristics. Supporting material covers fleet assignments and descriptions of the Chinese systems for hull numbers and equipment designations.

Modern Chinese Maritime Forces has the most complete unclassified information on Chinese state-owned vessels available anywhere. Noted China specialist Dr. Andrew Erickson, in the Foreword, writes “Today, China’s maritime forces have the most ships of any nation. This pathbreaking book documents their force structure in unprecedented detail.”

Modern Chinese Maritime Forces is available as either a searchable .pdf or a softcover 174-page book. Both can be bought as a bundle for a reduced price.

Because Mr. Meyer is continuing to support the book with new drawings and information, we update the .pdf quarterly. Anyone who purchases the latest edition .pdf version (now the Second Edition) automatically receives the updated version, at no charge, via the Wargame Vault. This feature of the Wargame Vault’s service ensures that your .pdf version of Modern Chinese Maritime Forces will never be more than three months out of date.

REVIEWS

“This is a phenomenally thorough project, and I suspect it is both more complete and up to date than anything available to our armed forces at a classified or unclassified level. Herr Meyer’s meticulous research and superb drawing skills have produced a reference resource of unparalleled usefulness for anyone needing a handy reference for China’s vast naval and paranaval forces.” 

– A.D. Baker III, former editor of Combat Fleets of the World

“I think it is for the first time that such a nearly complete overview of the Chinese maritime services has been made available to the public. The Chinese navy has risen in twenty years from a regional outdated navy to one of the global players which cannot be overlooked by the other world and regional powers.”

– Werner Globke, editor of Weyer’s Warships

“This is a badly-needed book: an accessible, compact guide to the ships of the Chinese navy and its related paramilitary services. All of the ships are shown in very clear scaled drawings, which give a good sense of size and configuration. No other guide of this type exists. That makes this quite possibly the only good reference to the Chinese fleets. No one concerned with current naval affairs can afford to miss it.”

– Dr. Norman Friedman, technical naval author

“I devoured this book. This is perhaps the most important and most comprehensive technical naval analysis book to appear in a generation. With the advent of Cold War II and the announced return to great power competition between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, this book should be on the bookshelf of every serious U.S. Navy officer and naval analyst. It will be the standard reference.”

– Captain Jerry Hendrix, USN (ret.), Center for a New American Security