The Chinese Navy hospital ship Daishan Dao, or “Peace Ark,” has 300 hospital beds, eight operating rooms and carries 416 personnel, 107 of them medical workers. Since 2008, it has traveled across the Pacific and Indian oceans, even as far as the Caribbean Sea, administering humanitarian medical services to local populations.
Now in its 15th year of operations — after being at port for three years during the COVID-19 pandemic — the Peace Ark is back in the Pacific, beginning in Indonesia. It’s arguably become the most visible and symbolic centerpiece — “the envoy of light,” according to one patient in Vanuatu — of a broader strategy by the People’s Republic of China to win hearts and minds across Oceania while advancing China’s foreign policy objectives.
“Humanitarian assistance and disaster relief [have been] an effective tool with which Beijing is trying to reshape external perceptions,” wrote scholar Gregory Coutaz in a 2019 journal article. “China, like many other countries,” Coutaz wrote, “seeks to advance its international agenda through humanitarian efforts.”
About the author
Jason Steinhauer
Jason Steinhauer is an author and public historian in Washington, D.C. He is the founder of the History Communication Institute and author of the bestselling book "History, Disrupted: How Social Media & the World Wide Web Have Changed the Past." He is currently a global fellow at The Wilson Center and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Past bylines include TIME, CNN, and The Washington Post.
