An image has appeared showing a Chinese commercial roll-on/roll-off (RO/RO) ferry linked to a temporary pier via a barge with jack-up supports. This follows the emergence of satellite imagery showing multiple similar, but different jack-up barges in various stages of construction at a shipyard in southeastern China. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has been increasingly demonstrating its ability to leverage ostensibly non-military maritime assets to support amphibious operations, especially a possible invasion of Taiwan.
The picture in question looks to have first begun circulating on social media earlier today, but where or when it was taken is unclear. Independent naval analyst H.I. Sutton, writing for Naval News, was first to report last week on the construction of new jack-up barges at Guangzhou Shipyard International (GSI) on Longxue Island just southeast of the city of Guangzhou. GSI is a subsidiary of the state-run China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC).
An illustration of the approach for PLA over the beach-landing tests and training. The vessel connecting the ferry to the pontoons is not one of the recently revealed new designs, but obviously related in overall concept. Via 人畜无害遥感星/Wb. pic.twitter.com/Ni0PQAr5lF
— Alex Luck (@AlexLuck9) January 14, 2025
The use of a jack-up barge as the head of a temporary pier or causeway makes good sense as the struts provide valuable additional stability. This, in turn, would provide an added margin of safety. The U.S. military’s brief use of a temporary pier system to try to help increase the flow of humanitarian in the Gaza Strip last year underscored the potential vulnerability of such structures just to severe weather. A squall broke apart that pier, which did not feature a jack-up barge, after less than two weeks of operations and it took more than a week to get it usable again. Poor weather continued to dog its operations afterward.
The Chinese barge seen in the image circulating online now has at least two prominent jack-up legs at one end, but whether it has additional supports elsewhere is unclear. This is distinctly different from what is seen in the recent satellite imagery of GSI’s yard on Longxue Island, where barges with four, six, and eight jack-up legs are visible. At least some of those barges have their own built-in ramps, which could negate the need for a temporary pier/causeway system entirely in certain circumstances. This could also help make it faster and easier to establish these ship-to-shore nodes.
China is building at least 6 barges that can serve as mobile piers designed to give the PLA the capacity to conduct an amphibious assault on Taiwan. The barges are similar to the Mulberry harbors constructed for the Normandy invasion.https://t.co/rNMVrZhhTG pic.twitter.com/664NdDrqXo
— Edward Conard (@EdwardConard) January 13, 2025
It is important to note that jack-up barges are not new, nor is their use in combination with temporary pier/causeway systems. A particularly well-known military example of this is the employment of so-called Mulberry harbors by Allied forces following the D-Day landings in Normandy, France during World War II.
The PLA has itself been demonstrating its ability to use semi-submersible and jack-up barges as intermodal nodes between ships, including ostensibly commercial RO/RO ferries, and temporary piers/causeways for at least a decade. Some of the jack-up barges that have been employed in previous experiments and exercises look very similar to the one seen in the image now circulating on social media. This raises the possibility that the ‘new’ picture was taken some time ago.
これらは依然として不可逆的な装備ではないですしね。そりゃまあ使い捨て前提の大量生産装備だったりナマモノが準備されるようになれば話は別ですが。
きっちり定期的な分析もされてますし騒ぎすぎる必要はない。 pic.twitter.com/sRXcH6WM8S— お砂糖wsnbn (@sugar_wsnbn) January 14, 2025
It’s also worth noting that GSI’s yard on Longxue Island is best known for producing larger commercial vessels, including semi-submersible heavy lift types and jack-up platforms, though it does also produce military vessels. In addition, last year, GSI launched a still very curious ship featuring a large open flight deck, but with commercial-style rather than military markings, seen in the social media post below and that you can read more about here.
It is possible that the new jack-up barges under construction at GSI’s yard now could ostensibly be non-military in nature. At the same time, the presence of the integrated ramps points more to ship-to-shore connectors with clear military applications. Regardless, all of this underscores the thin and often non-existent line between the PLA and commercial and civilian enterprises in China. As already noted, the PLAN has been increasingly utilizing RO/RO ferries and other commercial maritime assets in amphibious exercises for years now.
The PLAN has been steadily and significantly expanding the size and scope of its organic amphibious warfare fleets, but commercial capabilities are clearly still viewed as offering valuable additional capacity. Though ships built to commercial standards would be more vulnerable, the added capacity could still be very useful for supporting an invasion of Taiwan, especially after an initial bridgehead is established. The PLAN could make use of a hybrid military/civilian amphibious force for future military operations elsewhere, as well as for disaster relief and humanitarian assistance activities at home and abroad. The PLA has also used commercial RO/RO ferries for routine peacetime maritime logistics purposes in the South China Sea.
“The PRC’s [People’s Republic of China’s] amphibious fleet has, in recent years, focused on acquiring a modest number of ocean-going LPDs [landing platform dock] and LHAs [amphibious assault] ships. There is no indication the PRC is significantly expanding its number of tank landing ships and medium-sized landing craft at this time,” according to the Pentagon’s most recent annual report on Chinese military developments, released in December. “Although the PLAN has not invested in the large number of landing ships and medium landing craft that analysts believe the PLA would need for a large-scale assault on Taiwan, it is possible the PLA assesses it has sufficient amphibious capacity and has mitigated shortfalls through investment in other operational capabilities, such as civilian lift vessels and rotary-wing assets to address this gap. The PLA may have confidence in the PRC’s shipbuilding industry’s massive capacity to produce the necessary ship-to-shore connectors relatively quickly.”
“An over-the-shore capability like the floating causeway will be a critical capability in a Taiwan invasion, giving the PLA the capability to bypass damaged or sabotaged ports and harbors with an independent, relocatable off-shore loading and unloading capability,” a report from the independent China Maritime Studies Institute published last year explains. “At least through 2030, the PLA’s reserve civilian merchant fleet is probably unable to provide significant amphibious landing capabilities or the maritime logistics in austere or challenging environments necessary to support a large-scale, cross-strait invasion of Taiwan. That said, if current trends in training and exercises continue, the PLA may be able to effectively leverage civil maritime shipping on a large enough scale to support a major amphibious operation by the mid-2030’s.”
“In the first wave of an assault the Chinese navy’s traditional amphibious assault ships could deliver roughly one heavy brigade’s worth of equipment (though likely spread over a larger number of lighter amphibious brigades) and about 21,000 troops. This pales in comparison to the capacity of its civilian fleet,” Tom Shugart, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) think tank, wrote in a piece for War On The Rocks back in 2022. “For my calculations, I considered only those ferries owned by companies that are either — like the Bo Hai Ferry Company — known to be organized as maritime militia strategic support fleets, or whose ships have taken part in previous military exercises. These ferries could deliver more than two additional heavy brigades’ worth of equipment, with amphibious vehicles delivered directly to the beach with modified ramps, while other vehicles could be delivered via temporary beach causeways or captured ports. If temporary piers or captured ports were available for China’s military-associated vehicle carriers, they could deliver at least five more heavy brigades’ worth of equipment.”
3c. …and if China can set up temporary piers for its PLA-associated pure vehicle carriers, or capture a port, they could deliver 5 more brigades in one trip. pic.twitter.com/3LdBIF5nH1
— Tom Shugart (@tshugart3) October 12, 2022
There continue to be acute fears that the PLA could launch a military intervention against Taiwan before the end of the decade. However, the U.S. military has more recently downplayed the possibility of China’s armed forces being in a position to successfully launch such an operation by 2027, if not sooner. American authorities have long said that is the year that Chinese President Xi Jinping has directed the PLA to be ready for action across the Taiwan Strait.
“The PLA regularly identifies shortcomings in the force’s warfighting and command capabilities in official media. These critiques guide its modernization efforts,” the Pentagon’s China military power report released in December notes. “Despite its rapid progress, the force has not yet demonstrated the type and scale of sophisticated urban warfare or long-distance logistics capabilities that would likely be required for operations against Taiwan or major contingencies overseas.”
“As we look at these operational challenges that the PLA is seeking to resolve, to the extent that their particular goal is to be feeling ready and confident that they can execute a short, sharp invasion of Taiwan at acceptable costs, they’re not there today,” Ely Ratner, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, said at an event that the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank hosted that same month. “They’re trying to get there. … But it’s not clear they’re getting any closer than they were over the last couple of years.”
The PLAN is certainly only continuing to increase its use of commercial capabilities, including jack-up barges and RO/RO ferries, to bolster the kind of amphibious capacity needed for a Taiwan intervention, and that could also be valuable for operations elsewhere.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com
