Since March, China has been making a splash with manoeuvres off its south coast involving a line of odd-looking barges with retractable legs that work like giant stilts. Taiwanese analysts aren’t impressed, however.

The barges have towers at their fronts that convert to long, drop-down bridges, so the vessels can connect to each other. If the first barge in a line of them touches the land, they can form a pier standing on the seabed and extending 800 metres or more to deeper water. Chinese soldiers, equipment and supplies could be offloaded from big ships that need that water depth, and the invasion force would have less need for ports.

Or so the theory goes.

But analysts in Taiwan say that, for the moment, the barges are not helping China much in achieving a capability to invade the island.

‘This is one of [China’s] efforts that probably won’t help a lot but it’s good for their propaganda,’ says Arthur Ding, one of Taiwan’s leading military analysts and a professor emeritus with Taipei’s National Chengchi University.

‘Whenever they develop something new, it is very cheap to harass and scare people in Taiwan.’

Ding says that, if China wants to use the barges as a pier into the Taiwan Strait in wartime, it will first need to gain complete air superiority and sea control wherever it wants to land. It will also need to control the territory around the point where the pier reaches land.

If China were to achieve this, Ding says, it would very probably also have control of at least one Taiwanese airfield or port.

Using a Taiwanese port or airfield for large-scale transportation of Chinese troops and vehicles would be far more practicable than relying on a pier built with legged barges, which Taiwanese ground forces could take out, Ding adds. The barges so far are incapable of self-defence and could also easily be destroyed by Taiwanese land-based missiles.

Ding still cautions that in the past three to four decades China has made much progress in developing military technologies to use in taking control of Taiwan.

Analysts in Taiwan and elsewhere say that the barges are unlikely to be used in an initial assault. Instead, they would support follow-on forces. For instance, in a war’s final stages, they could help Chinese forces land if Taiwanese harbours were destroyed.

Another Taiwanese barge sceptic is Chen Yeong-kang, a retired admiral and navy chief who is now a legislator for the opposition Kuomintang, which favors stronger ties with China. He told a briefing at the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents’ Club in April that the military threat from the barges would be very low until China managed to occupy Taiwanese harbours and airfields.

‘If you destroy the harbour, they can use them, but this is for the third wave or fourth wave’, Chen said.

‘If you try to conduct [an] amphibious landing, you need to build up a beachhead and the frontline,’ he said, emphasising that if there is ‘only one single-line contact to [the] inland area, it’s not a strategy; it’s naive.’

Su Tzu-yun, an analyst with Taiwan’s government-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research, describes the barge design as very innovative. Still, he dismisses the idea that they are a game changer and says the vessels would be ‘very fragile’ in the face of Taiwanese heavy artillery. Like Ding, he notes that China would first need command of sea, air and coastal areas to prevent the barges becoming an ‘easy target.’

A takeover of Taiwan would involve a full ground invasion of Taiwan’s main island, but there are fewer than 20 beaches on which an amphibious assault could land, and in wartime they can be defended using anti-landing equipment. There is speculation that the barges could help China to circumvent this obstacle and allow an invasion force to land on other parts of the coast.

However, it isn’t clear how this scenario would play out, given that many analysts think that, by the time the barges were deployed for a follow-on force, a beachhead would already have been secured. Su believes that the first assault wave in a Chinese invasion would come ashore in ordinary amphibious landing craft. The barges would then be used in for the second wave to build up an artificial harbour to allow cargo and ro-ro ships to offload more troops and supplies, Su says.

The New York Times reported in April that the vessels were deploying in waters about 350 km southwest of Guangzhou, the city where they were built. Pictures from foreign satellites showed them in training with civilian cargo ships and ferries able to carry vehicles and personnel.

The report also noted that China featured the barges on a China Central Television program in mid-March about military rivalry with Taiwan, in which a commentator said that ‘once they appear, that means that the landing has scored a major victory.’

Su thinks the real purpose of such commentary is ‘to send a signal of political dissatisfaction with Taipei and the United States.’ He notes that it is also helpful propaganda for China’s nationalistic citizens: it gives the impression that China’s military can produce unique high tech weapons and distracts from corruption charges involving the top brass in China’s armed forces.