February 21, 2025:
For nearly thirty years China has been making serious preparations to launch an amphibious operation to conquer Taiwan. The latest development is a barge that carries a 130 meter long road platform that can be used on coastal areas that lack beaches but are close to roads. The new Chinese landing barges can approach these areas once Chinese commandos or paratroopers have seized a small portion. The barge gets close enough to the coastline for its road platform to be shoved or carried forward somehow to plop down near a coastal road. Then amphibious or RoRo ships come up behind the barge and drive vehicles, including tanks, onto the barge, across the road platform onto Taiwanese territory near a road. Currently, there are only six potential invasion beaches in Taiwan. The new road platform barge means Taiwan has to reconsider its defense plan against amphibious landings.
Last year Chinese leader Xi Jinping decided to seize or try to seize Taiwan before the end of the decade. Xi realizes Taiwan has a say in this matter and wants to mobilize sufficient forces and create the right psychological conditions in China and Taiwan. This includes having Chinese naval and air forces operating near Taiwan on a regular basis so the Taiwanese military is not alarmed every time Chinese forces operate near the island.
Some of these forces that regularly appear off the Taiwanese cast are those that would be used if China were seeking to blockade Taiwan. Chinese military forces will eventually blockade Taiwan and prevent any ships from getting in or out.
Preparations are also being made inside China. Laws have been passed allowing China to quickly nationalize foreign assets as part of a program to keep the Chinese people supplied if there is an international embargo and economic sanctions. China also plans to increase its emergency petroleum stockpile so there will be supplies for years of isolation. China is also building a pipeline to get petroleum to areas that normally receive it from the nearest coastal city and port. China is purchasing oil from as many suppliers as possible as these nations will feel the economic pain if China is embargoed because it seized Taiwan.
Xi Jinping expects most of the nations in the world to oppose a seizure of Taiwan. To deal with that, China is reducing its holdings of American government bonds. This reduces the damage to China if the United States declares war and seizes whatever Chinese assets it can. China hopes such a war will not involve much military action beyond that needed to blockade China. According to Chinese plans, that blockade would last a few years and would then be lifted because so many nations want to end their economic suffering because trade with China was blocked. China is the second largest, after the United States, trading nation in the world and taking Chinese trade out of circulation would cause worldwide suffering. In theory, it would be worse for China but not if China can build up large enough reserves of essential industrial supplies to survive the economic catastrophe China created. These Chinese moves would lead to economic disruption outside China for years and have a lasting impact that could take a decade or more to recover from.
The Chinese plans are theoretical at the moment even though China is quietly implementing some aspects of their surviving the expected worldwide economic disruption a seizure of Taiwan would lead to. Another problem is that enough details of the Chinese plan have become known to trading partners and nations willing to use military and economic force to block a Chinese attack on Taiwan. China wants to avoid a war but Taiwan and its military allies, especially the United States, are willing to meet force with force. China doesn’t want to get into a war because its forces are untested and, as recent corruption scandals have demonstrated, led by generals who are more concerned with getting rich than getting ready for war.
Taiwan and its allies have been increasing their military preparations for over a decade. This began before the current Chinese economic and military activities and China is now seen reacting to efforts to make the Chinese plans more difficult to implement. Taiwan has purchased new weapons as well as increasing stockpiles of ones it already has. That means more warships, warplanes, and equipment for ground forces.
Taiwan is the most troublesome independent portion of China. After World War II Taiwan acquired protection from the United States before the new communist Chinese government could get organized and do anything about the troublesome Chinese province of Taiwan.
Over twenty years ago China began building a large quantity of amphibious shipping. Two Landing Ship Dock or LSDs were built in large, covered sheds. These 25,000 ton LSDs carry four LCAC high speed landing craft and four helicopters each. China began building four to five 4,800 ton Landing Ship Tank or LSTs a year. These LSTs can carry about 2,000 tons if they are not going to run up on a beach. The Chinese prefer to avoid that, as it eventually destroys the LST, and you can carry more load if you don't. A larger number of LSMs, which are smaller than LSTs, but in this case almost as large as World War II LSTs were also under construction. Large numbers of smaller landing craft were also being built, all of it apparently capable of making the 300 kilometer trip from the mainland to Taiwan.
China has also built conventional military amphibious assault ships similar to those used by the United States since the 1960s. China has eight 40,000-ton Type 075 LHDs. This type of amphibious assault ship uses helicopters to get most of its troops ashore. There is a well dock in the rear for loading Type 726 air-cushioned landing craft as well as conventional landing craft. The vehicle deck carries up to a hundred vehicles, usually a mix of trucks and amphibious ZBD-5 IFVs and ZTD-5 light tanks. Vehicles can also be driven on or off the LHDs via ramps, like RoRo vehicle transports and ferries. It will take a few years of experience before determining the optimal mix of combat vehicles and landing craft for this class of LHDs.
Back then China would not reveal the eventual size of this amphibious fleet. Taiwan defense officials suspected enough of these amphibious ships were being built to land enough divisions on Taiwanese beaches to hold them. China will also use a lot of civilian transport for an attack on Taiwan, meaning they could put nine or more divisions on ships. The navy's amphibious shipping would be used for the first wave, where speed is needed. But the next waves could be put ashore with civilian ferries and transports. In addition, there is an airborne division.
China also expects to use a growing number of large civilian ferries, especially the RoRo (Roll On, Roll Off) models for a major amphibious operation to seize Taiwan. In the last year Chinese military planners also ran some simulations from the defender’s point-of-view and included the many anti-ship weapons Taiwan and its allies would have available, even after a port had been seized and reinforcements were needed to hold it. This is where the ferries and RoRos were essential, but staff exercises found that the civilian vessels were very vulnerable to attack and unexpected bad weather. These problems would, at the very least, render the civilian vessels unable to complete their missions and in some cases be lost. Arming the civilian ships with missile-defense systems, along with sailors to operate them, would help, but not solve the problem.
The staff exercises also found that there were now so many ferries and RoRos available, and part of the invasion operation, that there were not sufficient nearby Chinese ports to load all the civilian vessels at once (something equivalent was a fatal flaw in Operation Sea Lion). China is now reconsidering its invasion plans.
Meanwhile many Chinese RoRos have been modified for amphibious operations. As recently as 2020 China was observed using the Bang Chui Dao, a 20-year-old passenger RoRo ferry modified for amphibious operations actually using its new capabilities in an amphibious training exercise. Built in 1995 as a vehicle/passenger ferry, the Bang Chui Dao was modified in 2019 to give it a sturdier, and longer, rear ramp that could load and unload the 26-ton ZTD-5 amphibious tank as well as the lighter ZBD-5 amphibious IFV (Infantry Fighting Vehicles). Other modifications revamped the passenger area to accommodate about a thousand troops. Originally built to carry 1,200 passengers and about a hundred cars and small trucks, with the modifications the ferry can now carry fifty armored vehicles and nearly as many military trucks. In effect the militarized ferry can carry and land an amphibious mechanized infantry battalion on any dock, jetty or coastal area that the ferry can get close enough for its ramp to reach. RoRo ferries like this cannot handle rough weather, especially away from coastal areas. The ferries are not equipped for long voyages and these militarized ferries are intended for use against Taiwan or other nearby land masses. That means they have to be loaded at ports close to the landing areas in Taiwan and there are not enough Chinese ports for that.
China has been modifying ferry designs for military use since 2012 when China launched Bohai Emerald Bead, the first of four passenger ferries designed for military use, when called up for military service. These four ferries, each displacing 30,000 tons, can each carry 2,000 passengers or troops and up to 300 vehicles and do so for long voyages on the open ocean. This was but the first of many dual use civilian-military RoRo ships built in China. The government pays for the military modifications and assists in obtaining the financing for these ships. Owners are compensated when these RoRos are occasionally used for short periods of military service.
Militarized RoRos were an interesting development since it wasn’t until 2009 that the first RoRo ship designed and built in China entered service. This ship was designed for military use, as it can carry up to 5,000 vehicles (cars and light trucks), or over a thousand armored vehicles. It has nine fixed and three adjustable decks for vehicles. A RoRo ship moves next to a dock and then deploys ramps so that its cargo of vehicles can quickly drive right off. If, for example, China invaded Taiwan, a RoRo ship could move into a recently captured port and unload an armored brigade in a few hours. Chinese planners became aware that the Taiwanese knew some intact docks in the right places were essential for the RoRos to succeed and those ports are now more difficult to take quickly and Taiwan has plans to cripple key ports before the RoRos can get to them.
The owner of most of these RoRo ferries is China Ocean Shipping Co. or COSCO, which operates a fleet of over 700 cargo, tanker, and RoRo ships. COSCO is owned by the Chinese government and its ships are available for use by the military. COSCO is a $20 billion a year business that also owns ship repair facilities and port operations around the world.
COSCO has been scrambling to buy or build more RoRo ships, mainly because Chinese automobile manufacturers are exporting more cars to developing countries where Chinese vehicles are very popular, some selling for half what Western cars sell for. Back in 2005 COSCO had only three small RoRo ships, all leased from Japanese owners, and realized it would be cheaper to build Chinese RoRos to move most or all of its exported cars. At the time, most of the RoRo ships in the world were owned by Japanese shippers. Noting the military usefulness of RoRo ships, COSCO was ordered to not only build these ships in China, but to optimize them for military use. Now China is exporting most of its vehicles using Chinese-built RoRo ships and many are part of the wartime reserve fleet. This concept of a wartime reserve fleet has long been used in the West.
In 2023 Taiwan bought fourteen M126 Ground Volcano mine dispensing systems for nearly $13 million each. Delivery is to be completed this year. Each Ground Volcano system is mounted on a 10-ton truck where short-range mortar tubes are used to launch canisters of mostly anti-vehicle mines designed to disable a vehicle by blowing off a tire or breaking the track on a tank. Each canister contains some anti-personnel mines to make it more difficult for enemy troops to quickly clear the anti-vehicle mines out of the way. Before using Volcano, you can set the self-destruct time for the mines for anything between 4 hours to 15 days. This prevents anyone from retrieving, disarming and reusing the mines. Ground Volcano dispensers mounted on trucks take from four to twelve minutes to dispense 960 mines that create a mined area 1,100 meters wide and 120 meters deep. Taiwan has about a dozen useful invasion beaches and lots of high ground behind those beaches. The Volcano trucks can be based near each beach in a protected area to minimize the impact of pre-invasion missile strikes.
All this would be a rather ramshackle effort by American standards, but the Chinese believe it would be adequate against the Taiwanese. The key to such an invasion is keeping the U.S. Navy out of the war. Meanwhile, Chinese shipyards were also turning out submarines and surface warships. This means China could make a serious move on Taiwan by 2030.