The ship types in service with the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) include aircraft carriers, submarines, (both nuclear and conventional), amphibious transport docks, landing ships, tank, landing ships, medium, destroyers, frigates, corvettes, missile boats, submarine chasers, gunboats, mine countermeasures vessels, replenishment oilers and the various auxiliaries.

This list includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (August 2022)

All ships and submarines currently in commission with the Navy were built in China, with the exception of Sovremenny-class destroyers, Kilo-class submarines and aircraft carrier Liaoning, as these vessels originated from either Russia or Ukraine.

Ships of PLAN are named per Naval Vessels Naming Regulation (《海军舰艇命名条例》)^[1] that was first issued by the Central Military Commission (CMC) on November 3, 1978, and subsequently revised July 7, 1986.^[1] The convention for naming naval ships is as follows;^[2]

• Aircraft carriers are named after provinces.
• Nuclear-powered submarines are all named Changzheng (Long March) along with a number.
• Destroyers and frigates are named after cities.
• Smaller anti-submarine ships are named for counties.
• Tank landing ships and dock landing ships carry the names of mountains.
• Infantry landing ships are named for rivers.
• Replenishment ships are named for lakes.

There are approximately 500 vessels listed here that constitute the active fleet. Not included here are the various auxiliary ships that together number approximately 230.

* Figure includes both coastal and ocean-going auxiliaries, from tugboats to hospital ships. Not counted towards total number of active ships.

The tables below list the various ships according to their class and date of commission. The newest class of ship is listed first, with proceeding classes listed afterwards, arranged in order of age. Column headings include: "Type" (i.e. Chinese class designation), the types "NATO designation", the ships "Pennant number" (or hull number), the ships name in English and Chinese (Han 中文), ships "Displacement" in tonnes, and the "Fleet" in which it serves (e.g. North Sea Fleet, South Sea Fleet and East Sea Fleet).

The "Status" column is colour coded, green indicates relatively new and modern classes in service, while red indicates obsolescence and being in the process of decommissioning as newer types are brought into service. A third colour, blue, specifically indicates a ship which is not yet in commission, but has been launched and is in the final stages of construction, or has been handed over for sea trials. Any ships with a status colour of blue is not yet counted towards the total number of active ships.

Unlike warships of PLAN that are named per Naval Vessels Naming Regulation which many PLAN auxiliaries do not follow, but instead, they are designated by a combination of two Chinese characters followed by a two or three-digit number. The first Chinese character denotes which Chinese fleet the ship is service with, with East (Dong, 东) for East Sea Fleet, North (Bei, 北) for North Sea Fleet, and South (Nan, 南) for South Sea Fleet. The second Chinese character is for hull classification, such as Barge (Bo, 驳) for barge, Survey (Ce, 测) for survey vessel, Oil (You, 油) for oil tanker, Repair (Xiu, 修) for repair ship, Rescue (Jiu, 救) for rescue ship, Transport (Yun, 运) for transport & cargo ship, Tuo (tug, 拖) for tugboat, Water (Shui, 水) for water tanker, etc. When auxiliaries are reassigned to a different fleet, their pennant number would change accordingly. Some PLAN naval auxiliaries perform multiple functions and thus are referenced multiple times differently under various hull classifications. Furthermore, when PLAN auxiliaries are tasked to perform certain civilian missions such as in support of civilian research or construction projects, they are sometimes temporarily assigned different pennant numbers for the duration of those missions, thus making the accurate assessment of PLAN auxiliary fleet rather difficult.

In addition, some PLAN auxiliaries especially research vessels are jointly funded by other civilian agencies of Chinese government, and frequently conduct missions for these civilian agencies/departments, just like the way Protezione Civile funded Italian San Giorgio-class amphibious transport dock of the Italian navy, and thus also performs disaster relief missions in addition to military operations.^[9] When these jointly owned and/or funded PLAN naval auxiliaries are subject to civilian agencies/departments & perform missions for them, they are often assigned a different pennant number & name, just as in some cases of PLAN naval auxiliaries are sometimes assigned assigned different pennant numbers when performing certain civilian missions, thus making the accurate count of the PLAN auxiliary fleet even more complicated and difficult. Therefore, list provided here is seldom up-to-date. For a complete list of auxiliary vessels currently in service with the People's Liberation Army Navy please see the List of PLAN Auxiliaries.(Note that it is a work in progress and often may not yet be complete.)