Profiles in "Two Excellences, One Vanguard" | Striving to Be the New-Era "Sea Tigers"

National Advanced Grassroots Party Organization, Navy Honghe Ship Party Committee — Striving to Be the New-Era "Sea Tigers"

■ PLA Daily Reporters Hou Yongbo, Peng Hongxia

Navy Honghe Ship conducts a "New and Veteran Party Members Speak on Original Aspirations" themed Party Day activity. Photo by Li Shijiao

On the shore of the East China Sea, the sea stretches wide beneath drifting clouds. Recently, a distinctive "New and Veteran Party Members Speak on Original Aspirations" themed Party Day activity unfolded on the flight deck of the Navy's Honghe Ship.

Master Chief Petty Officer Han Jianting stepped up to the podium and shared with young Party members a heart-pounding damage control drill experience: "At the time, considering the high difficulty and risk of the exercise scenario, Wang Xin and I, as Party member backbone, voluntarily requested to go first. During the firefighting, the flames burned through two layers of protective gloves, and the air cylinder behind us kept sounding alarms, but we had only one thought in our minds: put out the fire…" Story after story of struggle, account after account of combat experience, deeply moved the sailors who had just completed an ocean-going mission.

Party member backbone charging to the front is precisely the spiritual code that keeps the "Sea Tiger Boat" perpetually advanced. In a naval battle more than 60 years ago, engineman Wang Muchang, with the condensation pipe of the machinery ruptured, used his bare hands to clamp the scalding rubber hose and held on with a willpower beyond ordinary human endurance until the battle ended. In that battle, officers and soldiers faced death unflinchingly, fighting the greater with the lesser, sinking and damaging enemy vessels several times their own tonnage, creating the classic combat example of "small boats defeating large warships." After the battle, the Ministry of National Defense awarded the boat the honorary title "Sea Tiger Boat." The iron-blooded commitment of "small boats defeating large warships, bayonet fighting at sea (小艇打大舰、海上拼刺刀)" was from that point on fused into the bloodline of officers and soldiers, becoming the spiritual core passed down through generations of this unit.

In October 2023, Honghe Ship officially received the "Sea Tiger Boat" heroic battle flag, becoming the fifth generation of "Tiger Heirs." Entering Honghe Ship's honor room, yellowed old photographs and rust-mottled old artifacts silently recount the loyalty and ardor of generation after generation of "Tiger Heirs."

At the outset of commissioning, challenges were formidable. The crew came from multiple units — including veterans from the old boat as well as shore-duty and rear-echelon logistics officers and soldiers transferred across units — and practical difficulties such as professional gaps and weak sense of belonging were especially prominent. The ship's Party committee immediately established a rigid rule: leading cadres take the lead on urgent and difficult missions, and Party member backbone shoulder the hardest subjects. Under the exemplary leadership of Party member backbone, all officers and soldiers of the ship aligned their thinking and pooled their efforts, successively resolving multiple difficult problems constraining the generation of combat capability.

A thick volume of ship history records the footprints of Honghe Ship's officers and soldiers accelerating their charge forward: during the equipment-reception phase, officers and soldiers worked overtime to familiarize themselves with the equipment, winning first place in the comprehensive acceptance evaluation and competition among vessels of the same type; during the full-training period, in the basic operational skills competition at the vessel training center, 17 officers and soldiers captured individual first-place finishes, and Honghe Ship took the team first-place title; after the vessel entered service, they introduced new methods and models of modern management, summarized a series of practical and effective experiences that have been widely adopted by sister units…

"Only when a ship has a soul can it navigate ten thousand li without losing its way." The ship's leadership told reporters that the ship's Party committee has always placed first priority on solidifying the ideological foundation of "Tiger Heirs" whose hearts are oriented toward the Party, requiring new officers and new soldiers to, in their "first lesson upon boarding the ship," first pay respects to the battle flag and study the history of battles; it regularly holds forums between new and veteran "Tigers" and "The Battle Flag Guides My Growth" sharing sessions, and on occasions such as Army Day and naval battle commemoration days organizes officers and soldiers aboard to conduct written correspondence and video link-up activities with old predecessors, guiding officers and soldiers to carry forward fine traditions and continue the red bloodline, so that the "Sea Tiger" spirit may be carried forward and glorified across the deep-blue ocean.

During the execution of escort missions in the Gulf of Aden, the ship's Party committee persisted in all-domain training and combat-realistic capability building, proactively breaking out of the routine of near-shore fixed training and directing its gaze toward more distant oceans. They routinely organized unscripted adversarial exercises and high-intensity special-situation response drills, forcing officers and soldiers to break through the limits of physical fitness, technical skill, and psychological endurance. At the same time, Honghe Ship boldly advanced training method innovation, implementing reforms to push command authority downward and flatten combat orders, streamlining redundant approval processes, and in accordance with relevant regulations granting frontline officers and soldiers the authority to independently assess, handle, and counterattack. After being assigned an upper-echelon reform pilot mission, the ship's Party committee closely focused on the core objective of "management serving warfare (管为战)," adhered to a problem-oriented approach, optimized institutional processes, and advanced in a coordinated manner 17 reform measures across 7 major categories; the relevant innovative results have been promoted by higher authorities.

Since entering service, Honghe Ship's officers and soldiers have continuously tempered the martial courage of "small boats defeating large warships, bayonet fighting at sea," with their navigational track extending step by step from coastal waters to the open ocean, repeatedly achieving new merits on the front lines of maritime rights protection, international escort missions, and major exercises and training, writing a new chapter of the new-era "Sea Tigers" across ten thousand li of maritime frontier.