Meet the Type 055 destroyers steering China’s blue-water ambitions as far as Australia

The blue-water role of China’s newest variety of naval destroyer was on show last week when Type 055 destroyer Zunyi led a small flotilla to conduct live-fire drills in international waters off the Australian east coast, prompting alerts from both Australia and New Zealand.

In October, three Type 055s fanned out across the Pacific on a range of missions. The Xianyang docked in Port Vila, Vanuatu, in the first southern Pacific deployment for the fleet.

Meanwhile in the western Pacific, Xianyang’s sister ship, the Anshan, had just finished taking part in the Joint Sword 2024B exercise around Taiwan, sailing through the sensitive Taiwan Strait as part of the Liaoning aircraft carrier strike group.

In a third corner of the Pacific, the Wuxi was leading a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) naval fleet in an exercise and joint patrol with Russian warships in the Sea of Japan, or East Sea, and the Sea of Okhotsk.

The deployments are a small part of the big roles the eight Type 055s in the PLA Navy fleet are playing in China’s ambition to become a global maritime power.

All eight were in service by 2023, adding to the navy’s two new aircraft carriers, four Type 075 landing helicopter docks and many more destroyers, frigates and submarines.

The shipbuilding spree not only gave China the world’s largest navy by number of vessels, but also massively upgraded the quality and combat power of its maritime forces.

  

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