China is preparing an armada of ferries and civilian vessels to invade Taiwan as Beijing steps up its pressure campaign against the island nation.

While the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) lacks the numbers of amphibious landing craft needed to stage the sort of invasion seen during the D-Day landings, it could bridge the gap with civilian vessels, including dozens of gigantic roll-on, roll-off ferries that can each carry hundreds of armoured vehicles.

“Amphibious landings under fire are among the most difficult of military manoeuvres,” said Ray Powell, the director of SeaLight, a Stanford University project focused on grey zone activities in the South China Sea.

Civilian ferries “would normally be poor choices for such a mission” but could be used to transport troops en masse across the Taiwan strait after its coastal defences are destroyed, or to overwhelm the island’s military “with sheer mass,” he said.

Beijing launched two days of military drills in the waters around Taiwan on Thursday in what it said was a “strong punishment” for “separatist acts” after a fiery inauguration address in Taipei earlier this week by Lai Ching-te, who was sworn in as president for a four-year term.

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It was the third set of exercises encircling the island in the past two years.

“We urge China to exercise self-restraint and stop undermining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and beyond,” Taiwan’s ministry of foreign affairs said.

China regards democratic Taiwan as part of its territory and has vowed to bring the island under its control, possibly by force, and US intelligence believes that Xi Jinping has ordered the PLA to be ready to take the island by 2027.

In the meantime, Taipei has had to react to a campaign of so-called “grey zone” activities including frequent cyber-attacks, regular incursions by military jets in its airspace, and harassment by Chinese vessels in its waters.

Taiwan’s military is vastly smaller than China’s, but it is protected by formidable mountainous terrain — and the treacherous 110-mile Taiwan Strait.

The Chinese navy already has the world’s biggest surface fleet, and it has also built dozens of dual-use vessels capable of acting during peacetime and in war.

A decade ago, Beijing issued technical guidelines for shipbuilders that would enable many of its civilian vessels to be suitable for military uses and is believed to have integrated its ferries, tankers and container ships within its military command structure, according to a report from the US Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute.

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Ferries ‘join the army’

Chinese state media has touted these efforts for years, regularly hailing the participation of ferries in cross-sea landing drills, with broadcaster CCTV praising the 135-metre Bang Chui Dao after it “joined the army” for military exercises in 2019, or the 164-metre Bohai Pearl in 2021, which Global Times said would make a good addition for “transporting troops on a large scale in amphibious landing missions,” citing an anonymous Chinese military expert.

Another Chinese shipping news service gushed over the Chang Da Long, a civilian ferry which is large enough to carry enough heavy tanks and other vehicles to fill two mechanised infantry battalions, writing that it is “dressed in a civilian shell, but it has a military heart!”.

Tom Shugart, an analyst at the Center for a New American Security think tank, estimated in 2022 that China’s civilian vessels could dramatically increase the tonnage of military material that can be moved by its existing military amphibious assault craft, giving it capacity to transport about 300,000 troops and their vehicles across the Taiwan strait in about 10 days.

“Both the Taiwanese and American intelligence communities should start watching China’s key civilian shipping in the same way they watch its naval vessels,” he wrote at the time.

While the idea of passenger ferries being kitted out to use in a conflict zone might sound unusual, it reflects the degree to which China’s private sector is enmeshed with the ruling communist party and the military policy of the government in Beijing.

It also makes planning a defence much more complex, analysts said.

“Civilian ferries are part of the broader Chinese concept of military-civil fusion, one in which civilian assets and capabilities are an inherent part of a whole of nation effort in national security,” said Alessio Patalano, professor of war and strategy in East Asia at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.

“Including these assets represents a significant complicating factor in those who need to think about how to meet the challenge of their use.”

But though it may be hard to tell whether a passenger ferry’s movements are part of a build-up for war, China’s broader intentions are clear, he added.

“There is nothing concealed about the Chinese military build-up,” he added.

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