I looks that way...
James Mulvenon, a China analyst with the RAND Corp., said that the Chinese Communist Party's military organ approved establishment of Cosco as an arm of the Chinese navy in 1985. .
At any rate, it seems COSCO ships were involved in gun-running to Cuba.
(Washington, D.C.): A front-page article in today's Washington Times identified the China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) as a key player in the ongoing, surreptitious delivery of weapons from China to Cuba. Ironically, this report comes shortly after the COSCO's CEO paid a visit to the Times for the purpose of disavowing widely reported connections between his company and the Chinese military....
In a move that has, regrettably, become standard operating procedure for making certain Chinese SOE's [State Owned Enterprises?] more palatable to U.S. and overseas investors, COSCO created a wholly-owned subsidiary -- COSCO Pacific -- to establish a funding vehicle on the Hong Kong stock exchange. This and other so-called "Red Chips," however, generally remain largely under the influence of the parent company. The contention by some market observers that there is a genuine "firewall" between COSCO and COSCO Pacific is made still less plausible by the Times' identification of yet another COSCO subsidiary (COSCO Tianjin) as the transporter of sophisticated weaponry components to Pakistan in 1998....Mr. Suettinger said. "Cosco is the merchant marine arm of the PLA Navy," Mr. Timperlake said. "If the Chinese military ever mobilized troops for action against Taiwan, Cosco would be part of the operation."
Cosco ships would provide arms and logistics support for Chinese military operations, U.S. officials said.