福建水师
Some Chinese historians, embarrassed by the completeness of the French victory, have asserted that disunity in the Chinese command structure was an important factor in the Chinese defeat. The Chinese regional fleets and armies represented a considerable 'personal' investment of revenue and prestige that was used to leverage influence at court, and the respective fleet commanders were often loath to see these important assets diminished by war damage. The result, at Fuzhou, was that the Fujian Fleet received little help from China's three other regional fleets. Despite appeals from Zhang Peilun and direct orders from the Empress Dowager Cixi, the commanders of the Beiyang Fleet, the Nanyang Fleet and the Guangdong Fleet declined to send ships to reinforce the Fujian Fleet. "Feiyun" and "Ji'an", two Fujian vessels which had been loaned to the Guangdong Fleet in 1882 to observe French movements in the Gulf of Tonkin, were sent back to Fuzhou in early August by Zhang Zhidong, the governor-general of the two Guangs, arriving just in time to share the fate of their comrades in the forthcoming battle. However, Zhang did not release any of his own Guangdong ships. Li Hongzhang defied an order to send two ships from the Beiyang Fleet to Fuzhou, and the Zhejiang governor Liu Bingzhang () refused to release the Nanyang ship "Chaowu".