Qiongsha Class Chinese Cargo Ship

Qiongsha (琼沙)-class cargo ship is a class of Chinese ship developed by China for its People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). These ships are mainly used for supplying garrisons in South China Sea. There are three versions of this class, including cargo ship, ambulance transport, and troopship versions. The general designers of all versions of Qiongsha class were Mr. Pan Hui-Quan (潘惠泉) and Mr. Huang Zhong-Fu (黄钟福). Qiongsha class cargo ship in PLAN service is directly based on Qiongsha 1 cargo ship in civilian service, which performs the same supply missions. The difference between the military and civilian version besides the fact that the military version is armed with heavy machine guns is that in addition to cargo, the civilian version also carried 219 passengers in cabins divided into two classes. The military version does not have any classification of cabins, but instead, they also act as emergency medical ships. Its secondary assignment as emergency medical provider is resulted from experience of deployment of island garrisons: once a soldier became sick, he must be transported to mainland for treatment, but even when transported by the fastest speedboat, it would still take two days to reach Hainan. Qiongsha class cargo ship is equipped with medical facility for preliminary treatment en route to mainland and thus providing better treatment. The number of passengers that can be carried is decreased accordingly. Cargo capacity of the military version is identical to that of civilian version: 200 tons of solid cargo, 150 tons of freshwater. Of the six ships of this class, all of them were built as cargo ship version to begin with, and it was only later some of them were converted to different versions.