Republic of China Navy

The Republic of China Navy (ROCN, Chinese: 中華民國海軍; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó Hǎijūn), colloquially known as the Taiwanese Navy (Chinese: 台灣海軍; pinyin: Táiwān Hǎijūn) by Western or mainland Chinese media, or commonly referred as the National Military Navy (Chinese: 國軍海軍; pinyin: Guójūn Hǎijūn) by local Taiwanese people, is the maritime branch of Taiwan's military, the Republic of China Armed Forces.

The service was formerly known as the Chinese Navy, the Central Navy or the Nationalist Chinese Navy before and during World War II, as well as and prior to the ROC's retreat to Taiwan.

Today, the ROC Navy's primary mission is to defend the territorial waters of the Taiwan Area under the Jurisdiction of the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) against any possible blockades, attacks, or invasion from the People's Liberation Army of Communist China coming from the mainland. Operations include maritime patrols in the Taiwan Strait and surrounding waters, as well as readiness for counter-strike and counter-invasion operations during wartime. The Republic of China Marine Corps (ROCMC) functions as a branch of the Navy.

The ship prefix, for the Republic of China warships, is ROCS (Republic of China Ship). An older term was the CNS (Chinese Navy Ship), which was mostly used with the pre-WWII era Nationalist Chinese navy ships.

The Republic of China Navy traces its origins to the Imperial Qing Navy. During the Xinhai Revolution, by late October 1911, nearly the entire Qing fleet had defected to the revolutionary forces. Under the leadership of Admiral Sa Zhenbing (Chinese: 薩鎮冰), then Minister of the Navy, who deliberately avoided taking military action against the revolutionaries, the Qing fleet effectively aligned itself with the new Republic. This mass defection formed the foundational core of what would become the Republic of China Navy.

Later the commander of one of those ships, Huang Chung-ying (Chinese: 黃鍾瑛), became the first Minister of the Navy of the Republic of China, where as Sa Zhenbing had served in several civilian administrative roles in the Beiyang government.

Several naval expansion programs were proposed during the first decade of the republic, but none of them were carried out because of a lack of funding, the outbreak of World War I, and the chaos of the Warlord Era in China. The cruisers that had been acquired by the Qing dynasty between the 1870s and the 1900s remained the main ships of the Chinese fleet through the 1930s. During this time the ROC Navy consisted of three fleets: the Central, Northeast, and Guangdong fleets, and its command structure was divided because of the warlordism in the country. When Sun Yat-sen established his government in 1917 in Guangzhou he was supported by the Navy admirals Cheng Biguang and Lin Baoyi, and when Chiang Kai-shek began his Northern Expedition in 1926 another admiral, Yang Shuzhuang, led part of the Beiyang Fleet to defect to Chiang's forces.

Following the success of the Northern Expedition, the Republic of China Navy (ROCN) formally realigned with the Nationalist Government under Chiang Kai-shek. During this time the Navy was commonly referred as the Central Navy (Chinese: 中央海軍).