By Li Jie

A Chinese flotilla left for the Gulf of Aden and the waters off the Somali Coast in mid-July to escort merchant vessels in the pirate-ridden waters. This is the third flotilla China has dispatched to the region since the end of last year.

The move, along with the two previous ones which took place on Dec 26 last year and April 2 this year, is an explicit indication that China's naval overseas operations are no longer limited as it was, and that more and more Chinese fleets are capable of sending an array of sophisticated warships abroad.

As a follow-up naval move to the previous two, the latest expedition will not only help protect the commercial vessels, but also enable more Chinese naval servicemen to gather more knowledge about maritime operations far from the country's coastal waters. This should greatly temper their resolve in extreme conditions and thus boost their capability and skills in terms of organization, logistics and armaments.

Since their first arrival at the Gulf of Aden late last year, Chinese warships have escorted hundreds of domestic and foreign vessels and protected merchant ships from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other countries and regions from pirate attacks. Their responsive action against fast-moving pirates and their high efficiency have helped maintain an unblocked sea transportation route in treacherous waters far from China's coast. At the same time, the effective actions by the Chinese navy have fully displayed and enhanced China's image as a responsible power, and greatly boosted the country's naval influence among foreign forces.

On a patrol operation in a water area side by side with navies from the European Union, the NATO, Russia, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea and other countries, the Chinese naval fleet gained rare opportunities to learn advanced maritime experiences from their foreign counterparts. The whole escort mission in the waters has also helped China's navy to innovate and develop a new mindset to conduct exchanges and cooperation with foreign navies. For example, in past escorting actions, Chinese naval servicemen have conducted contacts and communications in unprecedented frequency with other forces cruising this area. This has helped the country's navy, which has long been deployed along its own coast, gradually get used to using a variety of modern ways and means to communicate with foreign fleets, creating a new type of cooperation model and channel.

Despite accumulating experience of escort missions overseas, China's navy has still to work hard to further improve its experience in this aspect. Great effort is needed to increase the country's hardware equipment quantity and quality. Experience indicates that owning a fleet of sophisticated and well-performing large- and medium-sized warships suitable for long-distance voyage is the key to a successful overseas escort mission. Without a sufficient number of vessels, it would be absolutely impossible for China to dispatch a naval formation to the distant Gulf of Aden while maintaining its own daily drills, war readiness and necessary experiments around the country's coastal areas. Given that helicopters enjoy good mobility and overpowering advantages over warships in fighting small-scale and fast-moving pirates, foreign naval formations are usually equipped with some large- and medium-sized vessels carrying a good number of helicopters. This greatly benefits the escorting missions under rapidly changing and complicated maritime conditions. Compared with their foreign counterparts, the Chinese naval fleet patrolling the Gulf of Aden, however, is equipped with only two helicopters.

Past anti-piracy experience in the Gulf area also indicates that China's navy should make bigger efforts to further shorten its material and armament supply cycle to guarantee its success, and, if necessary, set up some coastal refuel and maintenance stations. Good-quality and fresh food supplies constitute an indispensable component for a country's naval servicemen to keep up robust and enduring fighting capability. Any naval expedition should carry a sufficient stock of staple and non-staple foodstuff, but fresh vegetables and fruits, whose preservation cycles are usually within three weeks, are still the things that are desperately needed by naval soldiers on long voyages. It is not unusual for seafarers to depend on medicines for making up with their insufficiency of vitamins.

Also, in a remote water area fraught with complicated situations and atrocious weather conditions, any equipment breakdown will prove a terrible challenge to a country's naval forces, given that they have no necessary maintenance equipment at hand. Under these circumstances, some necessary maintenance and supply stations should be set up as soon as possible to boost the capability of China's navy while away from the motherland.

Besides, the country's naval servicemen should further accumulate and improve their anti-piracy and escorting experience and strengthen their legal and other knowledge in this regard. Some measures should also be taken to help naval servicemen stay in good physical and psychological shape.

In addition, optimizing the country's naval organization mechanism, improving its command capability, increasing its cooperation with other countries and setting up advanced logistics system are necessary to help China's naval missions achieve greater successes.

The author is a researcher at the Chinese Navy's Military Academy.

(China Daily August 14, 2009)