By JANE PERLEZ
The New York Times
The New York Times
Updated, 2:04 a.m. ET | After an outsized international effort to help the Philippines that has been notable for China’s slow response, it appears the Chinese authorities are trying to reverse the damage to their country’s image.
China has offered to send its world-class hospital ship, the Peace Ark, to the Philippines, said Ramon Carandang, a spokesman for President Benigno S. Aquino III, in a telephone interview from Tacloban, the city hardest hit by Typhoon Haiyan.
Mr. Carandang said that China had told the Philippine Foreign Ministry informally on Sunday that the Peace Ark, a 300-bed ship with eight operating theaters, would be available. On Monday, the Chinese made a formal offer.
In Beijing on Wednesday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the Peace Ark would sail for the Philippines “as soon as possible.” The ministry statement also said that the first batch of relief workers from the Red Cross Society of China was leaving on Wednesday.
Mr. Carandang said the decision to accept the offer of the Peace Ark would be up to the Filipino Health Ministry, which is determining where international aid is most needed. But he predicted that the go-ahead for the Chinese ship, a gleaming 14,000-ton vessel that just completed a two-month, eight-nation goodwill tour through South and Southeast Asia, would come in several days.
“That’s a decision we don’t want to wait too long on,” he said.
The Peace Ark, launched in 2010, is described in military journals as a state-of-the-art hospital ship, and one of the few actually built for medical purposes. Most such ships used by the United States and Russia are converted container vessels, according to the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
The presence of the United States aircraft carrier George Washington off the Philippine coast, which has been serving as a floating airfield with its scores of helicopters delivering relief supplies, together with the deployment of United States Marines and aid from the United States Agency for International Development, has dwarfed efforts by other countries. But the outpouring of help from around the world, particularly from Britain, Australia and Japan – China’s biggest Asian rival – has put China on the back foot.
For a while, some analysts said, it appeared that China held back for fear that its assets would compare unfavorably with those of the United States. The Peace Ark’s 300 beds, however, can hold their own against the 51-bed hospital ward on board the George Washington.
The deployment of the Peace Ark would seem an ideal gesture to help heal injured people, as well as strained diplomatic relations between the Philippines and China.
In an assessment of the Peace Ark, the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth said the ship may have been designed, in part, to alleviate concerns about China’s military expansion.
“Such concern for generating diplomatic good will at the military level also shows that China may be worried about global views of its military, especially the increasing global reach of its navy,” the commentary said. “Military expansionism is often seen as the most threatening aspect of China’s global rise. Engendering good will and lessening the perceived threat of its global naval expansion are important strategic goals for China and the PLA Navy.”
Rear Adm. Shen Hao, who commanded the Peace Ark on its recent two-month tour, has described the ship as “a calling card for China.”
“This mission displays our character as a great nation,” he said before the ship left for its two-month mission.
During stops in Yangon in Myanmar, Karachi in Pakistan and Mumbai in India, the Chinese medics on Peace Ark treated civilian visitors, and during joint disaster relief exercises in the Gulf of Aden the staff performed surgeries for officers from a NATO combined task force, according to the Chinese military. In October, the ship returned to its home port, Zhoushan, in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, not far from the Philippines.
The reluctance to send substantial aid, especially given China’s proximity to the Philippines, has been largely explained by the sour relations between the two countries over territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
China’s first impulse when Typhoon Haiyan hit was to use its leverage to punish the Philippines, said Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing. “The message was: ‘The Philippines, you are in the penalty box.’ ”
“It’s petty,” said Chu Shulong, a professor of political science and international relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing. It showed, he added, “that China doesn’t have a big power mentality and foreign policy is still emotional.”
Even Global Times, a usually nationalist-leaning newspaper owned by People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party mouthpiece, criticized the government’s paltry aid to the Philippines as mean and short-sighted.
After the deployment of the Peace Ark, China has still another possibility up its sleeve.
In the days after Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines last week, 60 Chinese soldiers and observers were training with American soldiers in a small disaster-management exercise in Hawaii that was designed to mimic what should be done to help civilians after a typhoon. It was the first joint practical military field exercise by China and the United States, an effort pushed by the Pentagon to improve ties between the two militaries.
Was there any talk last week between the Chinese and the American soldiers of what was happening in the real event in the Philippines?
“Limited informal discussion,” said a spokesman for the United States Pacific Command.
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