The Dongxiu 912 class repair dry dock is a class of little known naval

auxiliary ship An auxiliary ship is a naval ship designed to support combatant ships and other naval operations. Auxiliary ships are not primary combatant vessels, though they may have some limited combat capacity, usually for purposes of self-defense. Auxili ...

currently in service with the

People's Liberation Army Navy The People's Liberation Army Navy, also known as the People's Navy, PLA Navy or simply Chinese Navy, is the naval warfare military branch, branch of the People's Liberation Army, the national military of the People's Republic of China. It i ...

(PLAN). The name of this class is after the first unit commissioned, with the exact type still remains unknown, and only a single unit of this class have been confirmed in active service as of mid-2010s. Dongxiu 912 class repair dry dock is specifically developed to maintain / repair Type 037 corvette. Dongxiu 912 class series ships in PLAN service are designated by a combination of two Chinese characters followed by three-digit number. The first Chinese character denotes which fleet the ship is service with, with East (Dong, 东) for

East Sea Fleet The Eastern Theater Command Navy (东部战区海军, ETCN) is a formation of China's People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and the naval component of the Eastern Theater Command. The ETCN was reorganized from the East Sea Fleet (ESF) by 2016. C ...

, North (Bei, 北) for

North Sea Fleet The North Sea Fleet (NSF; ), concurrently the Northern Theater Command Navy (), is one of the three fleets of China's People's Liberation Army Navy. Headquartered in Qingdao, Shandong, the fleet provides naval forces to the Northern Theater Comma ...

, and South (Nan, 南) for

South Sea Fleet The Southern Theater Command Navy (STCN), or the South Sea Fleet (SSF) until 2018, is a formation of China's People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and the naval component of the Southern Theater Command. History In December 1949, the Fourth Fi ...

. The second Chinese character is rather unusual in the Chinese convention in that it is not Wu (坞, short for Chuan-Wu, meaning dry dock), as for most cases for Chinese dry docks in military service, but instead, the second Chinese character is Xiu (修), meaning repair in Chinese, because this dry dock is used for repair missions. However, the pennant numbers may have changed due to the change of Chinese naval ships naming convention.

References

{{Ship classes of the Chinese Navy, state=uncollapsed Auxiliary ships of the People's Liberation Army Navy