Tian Zhong | |
|---|---|
田中 | |
 | |
| Deputy Commander of the PLA Navy | |
| Assumed office January 2014 | |
| Commander | Wu Shengli |
| Commander of the North Sea Fleet | |
| In office January 2008 –December 2013 | |
| Preceded by | Su Shiliang |
| Succeeded by | Qiu Yanpeng |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1956 (age 62–63) Huanghua, Hebei, China |
| Political party | Communist Party of China |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  |
| Branch/service | People's Liberation Army Navy |
| Years of service | 1974 − present |
| Rank |  |
Tian Zhong (Chinese :田中; born 1956) is a vice-admiral ( zhong jiang ) of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) of China. He has been Deputy Commander of the PLAN since 2014, and formerly served as Commander of the North Sea Fleet.
Chinese is a group of related, but in many cases not mutually intelligible, language varieties, forming the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the ethnic Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China. About 1.2 billion people speak some form of Chinese as their first language.
The People's Liberation Army Navy, also known as the PLA Navy, is the naval warfare branch of the People's Liberation Army, which is the armed wing of the Communist Party of China and, by default, the national armed forces of the People's Republic of China. The PLAN can trace its lineage to naval units fighting during the Chinese Civil War and was established in September 1950. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, the Soviet Union provided assistance to the PLAN in the form of naval advisers and export of equipment and technology. Until the late 1980s, the PLAN was largely a riverine and littoral force. However, by the 1990s, following the fall of the Soviet Union and a shift towards a more forward-oriented foreign and security policy, the leaders of the Chinese military were freed from worrying over land border disputes, and instead turned their attention towards the seas. This led to the development of the People's Liberation Army Navy into a green-water navy by 2009. Before the 1990s the PLAN had traditionally played a subordinate role to the People's Liberation Army Ground Force.
The Northern Theater Command Navy, or the North Sea Fleet is one of the three fleets of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy, under the Northern Theater Command. In September 1950 the Qingdao Army Base was redesignated as a naval base. Following the departure of the Soviet Navy from Lüshunkou, the North Sea Fleet was established in 1960 with naval bases in Qingdao and Lüshunkou.
