This will be welcome, no doubt:
The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy's hospital ship, the Peace Ark, set sail Thursday for a typhoon relief mission to the Philippines.
The 300-bed ship with eight operating rooms sounded its horn as it set off from a navy port on Zhoushan island in east China's Zhejiang Province. It is expected to take three days to reach the devastated Samar Province in the Philippines.
Still unanswered is the question of whether the Chinese didn't announce the ship would sail because of spite over territorial disputes or whether the ship was unready and the Chinese didn't want to admit it.
If the latter, it is interesting not because that is horrible. No navy has all its ships ready to sail at a moment's notice, after all. But why would China be unwilling to admit the perfectly normal thing of a ship not being ready to sail at once?
If their navy generally has that problem of readiness, the Chinese might not want people to draw conclusions broadly from one ship's inability to leave port and carry out a mission. Maintaining an image of a powerful fleet might have taken priority over projecting an image of caring.
Or maybe China just isn't at the point where they naturally think of sending what they have until they can send what is better or best. I don't believe our hospital ships are going there. And our large carrier is leaving now that amphibious warfare ships are arriving. The carrier was at sea and so went first to start the aid spigot. But now other ships are arriving.
In any case, planned operations can look smooth. It's when the unexpected comes up that you see how prepared forces are for action with little or no notice. I assume we were watching and listening to see how China's military and government reacted to this regional disaster.
