The early system assigned C355 to foreign-trade vessels, C356 to general ships, chiefly older Second World War types, C357 to coastal tankers and C358 to cargo and cargo-passenger ships. Mitchell attributes C355 to China Ocean Shipping, C356 to Chinese Coastal Shipping and C358 to Chinese Coastal Passenger Shipping. Zhe Hai 3 in July 1979 confirms C356, although Rosanoski did not trace the ship in Lloyd’s.
C253 became the standard government merchant livery, also used by COSCO until it introduced its own in the early 1990s. Brown 1995 makes the flag areas light blue where Rosanoski says they should be white, probably a printing error copied into Jarig Bakker’s drawing. Rosanoski supplied an additional corrected image. The funnel has two vertically arranged rows of three short wavy horizontal batons, each with two points as on the flag.
Keep the explicit scope label independent; no alias or company identity is inferred.