While China boasts increasing naval power, recent reports indicate a significant reliance on commercial shipping for major amphibious operations, highlighting potential vulnerabilities and complicating maritime rules of engagement in the event of a conflict with Taiwan.
This month, Naval News reported that the People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) relies on commercial shipping for sealift as its amphibious warfare fleet is still insufficient for significant operations like an invasion of Taiwan.
Naval News says China’s reliance on roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) ferries was illustrated during a recent amphibious exercise last month in Fujian province, situated opposite Taiwan and from where an amphibious assault on the self-governing island would likely be launched.
It identifies the RoRo ships involved as the Bo Hai Bao Zhu, Bo Hai Heng Da, Bo Hai Fei Zhu and Bo Hai Cui Zhu, all owned by the Bohai Ferry Group. It notes that these ships cumulatively displace 100,000 tons and are assigned to the Maritime Militia’s Eight Transport Group for military operations and exercises.
The report notes that the PLA-N currently possesses eight Type 071 landing platform docks, three Type 075 landing helicopter docks, 32 landing ship tanks, less than 50 smaller landing ships, six Zubr-class hovercraft and at least 15 Yuyi-class hovercraft.
It assesses that such an ad hoc force would be inadequate for ferrying the PLA Ground Force (PLA-GF) and PLA Marine Corps (PLA-MC) across the Taiwan Strait in the event of a full-blown Taiwan contingency.
The Naval News report also notes the Chinese government published national defense standards concerning constructing new civilian vessels to meet minimum requirements for PLA-N mobilization in 2015, mentioning at the time that China has 31 oceangoing RoRo ferries available.
However, Naval News says that the PLA and its reserve civilian merchant fleet are still likely unable to provide significant amphibious landing capabilities or maritime logistics in the austere and challenging environments necessary to support a large-scale, cross-strait invasion of Taiwan.
In terms of sealift capacity, Thomas Shugart notes in an October 2022 War on the Rocks article that the PLA-N’s amphibious assault ships could deliver around one heavy brigade’s worth of equipment and 21,000 troops in a first landing wave on Taiwan.
However, in a June 2023 article for the Institute for Security & Development Policy (ISDP), Mandip Singh states that Taiwan’s 1,200 tanks far exceed the PLA’s total ability to land less than half that number in a single, synchronized, cross-strait amphibious landing.
Despite that, Shugart says that number pales in comparison to China’s civilian fleet capacity, as companies such as the Bohai Ferry Group could deliver more than two additional heavy brigades’ worth of equipment, with vehicles delivered directly to the beach with modified ramps or via temporary beach causeways or captured ports.
He notes that with combined civilian and military sealift capabilities, China could deliver over eight heavy brigades worth of equipment and about 60,000 troops in a first sealift wave.
Furthermore, in a July 2021 study for Project 2049, Ian Easton mentions that, at minimum, the PLA may aim to land 300,000 to 400,000 troops to quickly seize Taiwan following a decapitation strike that seeks to take out Taiwan’s civilian and military leadership.
On the other hand, Easton notes that should Taiwan’s leadership survive a decapitation strike and successfully mobilize its military and civilian population, the PLA might have to send 2 million troops to Taiwan, including police and paramilitary personnel, to ensure a three-to-one or five-to-one numerical superiority against the defender.
China’s use of RoRo ships to augment its insufficient organic naval sealift capability is a hallmark of its Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) strategy.
In a June 2021 interview for the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), Greg Levesque describes MCF as a whole-of-government effort that seeks to increase interaction between China’s civil research and commercial sectors and its military, law enforcement and defense industrial sectors with the aim of translating China’s economic and technological achievements into military power.
Huang Yuwen, in an article for the Naval Academic Bimonthly, a publication of the Taiwanese Navy, notes that China has targeted commercial vessels with good performance and high maneuverability for conversion to replenishment at sea (RAS) vessels as part of Beijing’s MCF strategy.
Yuwen also says that China continues to integrate its military and civilian sectors through this strategy, with plans to encourage domestic shipbuilders to design and build various types of ships for military use. He mentions that the ultimate goal is to provide a large landing fleet to support force projection or amphibious landings.
Such a strategy lends itself easily to China’s status as the world’s largest shipbuilding country, with China accounting for 48% of global shipyard output in 2022, placing it ahead of South Korea and Japan. However, despite vast ship numbers and shipbuilding capacity that could be reoriented to raise an ad hoc amphibious landing fleet, China’s merchant fleet still faces challenges in wartime readiness.
In a separate August 2021 article for War on the Rocks, Shugart points out that China has issued technical standards for critical types of civilian ships to ensure they can serve national defense needs if mobilized. He notes that many of China’s merchant vessels are built with military-supporting features and design characteristics.
Shugart also says that instead of waiting for a crisis to mobilize and organize merchant fleets ad hoc, Chinese leaders have already started to organize civilian shipping into auxiliary military units.
However, Shugart argues that China’s civilian ships will likely be vulnerable to attack due to their defenseless nature and limited damage control capabilities. Despite that, he says the PLA-N has been building world-class cruisers, destroyers and frigates to put robust anti-air and anti-submarine defenses around an invasion fleet comprised of civilian vessels.
He adds that well-prepared civilian ships may be harder to destroy than some may anticipate, as China’s ferry companies claim to have equipped their newer ferries with improved firefighting capabilities.
At the same time, China’s potential use of civilian RoRo ships for an amphibious landing would pose significant issues for established rules of engagement during wartime. In a July 2023 article for the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Tomohisa Takei points out that as the possibility of RoRo ships being deployed in assault landing operations has increased, they can have the same belligerent status as warships.
Takei mentions that the 1907 Convention Relating to the Conversion of Merchant Ships into Warships (Hague Convention VII) stipulates procedures for converting merchant ships into warships, including placing them under the direct jurisdiction of the country they belong, displaying distinctive emblems, being commanded by a commissioned officer and complying with the laws of armed conflict.
He notes that if China launches an amphibious assault on Taiwan, the Chinese government will assert that Taiwan is part of China and does not recognize it as an independent country, removing the former’s obligation to act by that convention, with China’s RoRo ships not needing to fly the Chinese flag.
Takei says that would make it difficult for the Taiwanese military to determine whether RoRo ships are engaged in civilian operations or military missions, potentially leading to potential violations of the principle of distinction in the law of armed conflict.