China's latest innovations in the maritime domain, including large barge chains extending from Chinese beaches into the sea and powerful new designs for cutting underwater cables at record depths, have caught the attention of defense experts and raised concerns about the role these innovations might play in a future invasion of Taiwan.
Read Also...:
Protests against Elon Musk's purge of US government swarm Tesla showrooms
03-30, 2025
Nurses shield newborn babies from tremors in China after Myanmar rocked by 7.7-magnitude earthquake
03-30, 2025
Prince Harry has been accused of bullying by the head of Sentebale charity. Here's what we know
03-30, 2025
Protesters against Elon Musk's purge of US government swarm Tesla showrooms
03-30, 2025While these new tools may ostensibly have civilian applications, experts say they highlight China's growing military and technological prowess. At the same time, the ruling Communist Party is increasing pressure on Taiwan, a self-governing democracy that China claims as its territory and has vowed to take by force if necessary.
China already sends fighter jets and warships close to Taiwan almost daily and conducts increasingly frequent military exercises to intimidate what it calls "Taiwanese separatist forces." Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump is unsettling Taiwan with his mercantilist "America First" foreign policy, abandoning decades-old assurances to Europe, and pushing long-time Asian allies and partners to pay more for U.S. protection.
This month, video of the landing barges first appeared on Chinese social media before quickly disappearing. The video showed three massive vessels anchored near a seaweed-strewn beach, surrounded by fishing boats and a few tourists. The three barges were held above the water by sturdy legs and connected by bridges, forming a huge causeway extending more than 800 meters from the beach offshore.
CNN has geolocated the video to a public beach near Zhanjiang in Guangdong province, China, home to the headquarters of the Chinese Navy's South Sea Fleet. Satellite images have confirmed their location. Defense analysts J. Michael Dahm and Thomas Shugart said the barges represent a "significant upgrade" in the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) amphibious assault capabilities. They could form a repositionable pier to move large numbers of tanks, armored vehicles and other heavy equipment ashore once fire superiority is established, if invading Taiwan.
"The real innovation is the potential for them to move a lot of material, potentially hundreds of vehicles an hour, to a remote beach, a damaged port, or a bare landing area, if they wanted to," said Dahm, a retired U.S. Navy intelligence officer and a senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in the northeastern United States. Shugart, a former U.S. submariner and adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security think tank, noted that the barges are among a growing number of innovative platforms, munitions, and weapons systems the Chinese military has tested in recent years.
"The West doesn't have anything like this. I've never seen anything like what we're seeing now," he said. CNN has reached out to China's Ministry of National Defense for comment. Taiwan's Defense Ministry said it had assessed that the new barges were "designed with extendable ramps to serve as temporary wharfs for the rapid unloading of main battle tanks and various vehicles in support of amphibious operations." It said it would continue to monitor the barges and assess their capabilities and operational limitations.
Meanwhile, Chinese researchers from a state-affiliated institution claim to have developed a powerful deep-sea device: a cable cutter capable of slicing through highly fortified communication and power lines at depths of up to 4,000 meters, almost twice the depth of the world's deepest underwater cables. The new design was published last month in the peer-reviewed Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineers and first reported by the South China Morning Post. This comes amid growing concern about the vulnerability of Taiwan's critical infrastructure. Recent suspected damage to the island's undersea cables has heightened fears that China may be trying to disrupt the island's communications with the outside world.
Collin Koh, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore, said cable-cutting tools are commonly used for maintenance, and the breakthrough in being able to cut cables at record depths with extreme efficiency is not alarming in itself. "But what's alarming is the political context we attach to it," he noted, citing recent incidents involving damage to undersea cables near Taiwan and in the Baltic Sea involving Chinese vessels.
The concern is that China might cut undersea cables around Taiwan in the event of an invasion, spreading panic among the public and potentially disrupting the island's military communications with the United States and other partners. But Koh noted that this new cable-cutting design may only exist in the experimental phase so far. "Whether it has been translated into an operational tool that is available for use is a big question mark," he said.
"Invasion" barges. The video of the landing barges offered the first close-up look at the "special and unusual barges" spotted at a shipyard in Guangzhou in January, as reported by Naval News. The outlet said they were reminiscent of the Mulberry Harbors, artificial ports constructed for the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II. While some analysts suggest the barges could be used for civilian purposes, such as humanitarian relief, many experts in and outside Taiwan believe they are primarily built for military purposes.
Su Tzu-yun, director of the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taiwan, said the barges could provide the PLA with a strategic advantage by creating temporary coastal landing points, especially if Taiwan destroys its own ports in self-defense during an invasion. "This kind of barge has six or eight hydraulic legs that can lift them out of the water to create a stable platform, and then they can create a bridge from shallow water to deeper areas," Su said. Shugart, the former submariner, said the barges could even potentially drop ramps over seawalls or other obstacles to reach coastal highways, allowing the PLA to move troops and equipment ashore.
He added that the barges also increase the speed of operations. "We've seen them set up, disassemble, and set up again multiple times in the space of a few days," Shugart said, citing satellite imagery. However, due to their large size and slow speed, the vessels are highly vulnerable to enemy fire and would likely only be deployed as part of a second wave, following the initial landing force across the strait, which experts say is about 150 kilometers wide at its narrowest point. "Before they even consider starting to land forces and move forces across the (Taiwan) Strait, they're going to make sure that they have controlled the air, information and naval superiority of the entire strait," Shugart said.
U.S. officials believe Chinese leader Xi Jinping has directed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, but they stress that does not mean an invasion will happen that year. "These barges are just a compelling shiny object that draws attention to the fact that the PLA is making preparations to be ready to act on Xi Jinping's orders in the coming years, if called upon to do so, when you consider all the other improvements we're seeing in PLA capabilities, particularly PLA infrastructure improvements," Dahm said.
