Yulin-class gunboats were
gunboats of the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
's
People's Liberation Army Navy
The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN; ), also known as the People's Navy, Chinese Navy, or PLA Navy, is the maritime service branch of the People's Liberation Army.
The PLAN traces its lineage to naval units fighting during the Chinese ...
. They first entered service in the 1960s, but had been completely taken out of active service by the late 1990s, and were transferred to law enforcement agencies.
However, just like the
Shantou
Shantou, alternately romanized as Swatow and sometimes known as Santow, is a prefecture-level city on the eastern coast of Guangdong, China, with a total population of 5,502,031 as of the 2020 census (5,391,028 in 2010) and an administrative ...
,
Huangpu and
Beihai
Beihai (; Postal romanization: Pakhoi) is a prefecture-level city in the south of Guangxi, People's Republic of China. Its status as a seaport on the north shore of the Gulf of Tonkin has granted it historical importance as a port of internation ...
classes that were transferred for law enforcement adaptation, these obsolete and aging boats were not satisfactory in their new roles due to their low maximum speed, sometime as low as 10 knots, which was not sufficient to catch the smugglers' high-speed motorboats. As a result, these boats were subsequently transferred again, this time to reserves, subordinated to naval militia in various Military Maritime Districts in China as training boats and port security and patrol boats within the confines of the harbors.
Increasingly, the class is assigned to ferry duties.
Though this class is relatively in better condition than the Shantou, Huangpu and Beihai classes because they are preserved and maintained on land, like the Shantou, Huangpu and Beihai classes, as the new class of port security and patrol boats enters service, the Yulin class is increasingly being converted, mothballed and eventually scrapped.
Just like the Shantou, Huangpu and Beihai classes, many of the surviving units are being converted to target drones controlled by larger boats such as those mentioned, and thus reactivated into active service as minor support auxiliaries. When the drones are in operation, crew departs the boat.
References
Gunboat classes
Gunboats of the People's Liberation Army Navy
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