China is developing some startling new kit in its quest to seize Taiwan
China filed patents for the new barges in 2020, notes Mike Dahm, a former naval intelligence officer.
Is it a barge? Is it a bridge? It is both. Last summer China began building several unusual vessels at its Guangzhou shipyard on the south coast. The barges had legs that could drop down to stabilise the craft in shallow water, and wielded a 100m-bridge that could extend from the bow and onto a beach. In recent weeks pictures have emerged of these mongrel ships (see photo) and of how they connect together into giant causeways. The fear is that they could one day be used to funnel troops and tanks onto the beaches of Taiwan.
Until recently, Chinese military planners had two options to support an invading force. They could use vehicle ferries to unload troops and tanks at a port. Or they could use “roro” (roll-on, roll-off) ferries to unload amphibious vehicles into the sea. “There was a missing link,” says Tom Shugart, a retired American naval officer. “How are they going to allow these ferries to send non-amphibious vehicles and trucks onto the beach without a port?” A floating causeway, seen on satellite images of Chinese ports in 2021, was one option. But they are cumbersome.
China filed patents for the new barges in 2020, notes Mike Dahm, a former naval intelligence officer. They resemble the “Mulberry harbours” used for the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944, but are more versatile. They can be joined to make one vast bridge allowing larger vessels to disgorge troops and tanks onto the barges further offshore. “I was stunned when I saw these three things put together,” says Mr Shugart. “I had never guessed that’s what they were going to do.”
When connected, the barges would seem to allow four roro ferries to dock at the same time. That would mean about 1,200 vehicles and 6,000 people, equivalent to a brigade. Moreover, the vessels unlock the carrying capacity of China’s 60-plus vehicle carriers, whose side-ramps could not be used on a causeway or beach. The contraptions are probably too big and vulnerable to mines and artillery to be used in the first stage of any invasion, says Sidharth Kaushal of rusi, a think-tank in London, but would be used to deliver follow-up forces and supplies once China had a beachhead.
Mr Shugart thinks China probably has seven of the new barge-bridges.The good news, he says, is that seven is probably not enough to mount an invasion of Taiwan. The bad news is that China builds ships very fast. A paper published on March 11th by csis, another think-tank, found that a single Chinese state-owned shipbuilder produced a larger tonnage of commercial vessels in 2024 than America has built since the second world war. Mr Shugart does not think dozens of barges would be needed. “I’m confident that in about eight months, they could probably build enough.”
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