China’s quiet mobilization of civilian ships for beach-landing drills signals a stark new phase in its bid to intimidate Taiwan—blurring the line between logistics and coercive psychological warfare.
This month, Reuters reported that China is mobilizing its vast civilian fleet to bolster military preparations for a possible invasion of Taiwan, confirming this by ship-tracking data and satellite imagery of exercises conducted in the summer of 2025.
The drills, observed near Jiesheng this August, showed civilian cargo ships and roll-on, roll-off (RO-RO) ferries unloading hundreds of vehicles directly onto beaches, a tactic naval experts say significantly expands the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) first-wave capacity.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, who presided over a military parade in Beijing this September without mentioning Taiwan, has made reunification a central goal of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which views the self-governing island as a renegade province. Taiwan rejects this claim, insisting only its 23 million people can decide its future.
Analysts warn that China’s use of civilian vessels—products of its dominant shipbuilding industry, which accounts for over half of global output—could enable landings on multiple sites, complicating Taiwan’s defenses. While the PLA can currently transport about 20,000 troops in an initial assault, experts estimate it would need hundreds of thousands more, supported by continuous resupply, to be successful.
Taiwan’s defense ministry says it closely monitors these exercises and has contingency plans. Still, officials caution that China’s maneuvers also serve as “cognitive warfare,” aiming to intimidate rather than immediately attack.
Assuming that China would perform a blockade of Taiwan alongside a decapitation strike to take out the latter’s leadership and paralyze resistance, it would still need to land boots on the ground to assert control – perhaps one of the most challenging military endeavors.
Pointing out the limited capacity of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) sealift capability, Thomas Shugart mentions in an October 2022 article for War on the Rocks that its amphibious assault ships could deploy 21,000 troops in the initial wave of an assault – a capacity dwarfed by its civilian fleet.
Shugart points out that when combined with RO-RO ferries, that number could rise to 60,000 troops, and that the PLAN’s sealift capability, combined with civilian ferries, could unload 300,000 troops in the span of 10 days.
In line with Shugart’s analysis, Ian Easton mentions in a July 2021 report for Project 2049 that following a decapitation strike, China may need to land 300,000 to 400,000 troops to seize key objectives in Taiwan following a decapitation strike quickly.
Rapid sealift capability would be necessary to give China a quantitative edge over Taiwan’s defenders. Timothy Heath and other writers mention in a June 2023 RAND report that Taiwan could immediately field 88,000 troops to resist a Chinese amphibious landing – enough to deny China an easy victory, but insufficient to win without US and allied intervention.
However, Easton points out that should China’s decapitation strikes fail, China may have to mobilize up to two million troops plus police and paramilitary personnel to ensure a three-to-one or five-to-one numerical advantage against Taiwan’s defenders, which he estimates to be around 450,000 troops.
Also, China’s possible use of civilian ferries to augment the PLAN’s sealift capabilities faces several challenges. J Michael Dahm mentions in a January 2023 report for the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) that China’s plans to use RO-RO ferries to supplement the PLAN’s sealift capabilities remain constrained by major capability flaws.
Dahm points out that RO-RO vessels still lack meaningful amphibious capability, depend on intact captured ports, and remain slow, vulnerable, and impossible to protect in contested waters. He also adds that observed exercises involving these ships were scripted, uncontested, and conducted under ideal conditions with complete control of port infrastructure.
While Dahm notes that China has demonstrated impressive port-to-port lift capacity for follow-on forces, he warns that damaged ports, mines, and missile strikes would quickly cripple civilian shipping, making it largely irrelevant to the critical first phase of any cross-strait assault.
Apart from those constraints, Lonnie Henley points out in a November 2024 CMSI report that China’s plan to use civilian vessels as the logistical backbone of a Taiwan invasion is riddled with flaws, such as weak command-and-control over largely untrained civilian crews, poor and irregular militia training, and major data-management failures that hinder rapid mobilization.
Henley points out that legal and financial gaps complicate ship requisition, while widespread foreign-flag ownership limits China’s ability to mobilize much of its own fleet. He also adds that retrofitting civilian ships for military use remains uneven and slow, and bureaucratic fragmentation further delays coordination. Henley notes that these structural weaknesses make civilian shipping a vulnerable and unreliable pillar of China’s cross-strait invasion strategy.
Given the constraints on China’s RO-RO fleet for a Taiwan invasion, these exercises involving civilian RO-RO vessels may serve a more psychological rather than military purpose.
Furthermore, China’s lack of fanfare surrounding its recent RO-RO exercises may indicate a new form of cognitive warfare. In a June 2025 Global Taiwan Institute (GTI) article, Jeremy Chen mentions that China’s “silent exercises” represent a shift from overt intimidation to information-control-based cognitive warfare.
He says that instead of loudly publicizing military drills, China now withholds details, leaks selective or ambiguous information through third parties, and limits official announcements. He adds that this deliberate silence creates uncertainty, fuels conspiracy theories, and pressures Taiwan’s government by undermining public confidence in official statements.
Chen notes that unannounced drills, such as these RO-RO exercises, intensify anxiety by depriving Taiwan of clear situational awareness. He states that through ambiguity and information asymmetry, China uses these low-profile activities to manipulate perceptions and shape Taiwan’s domestic sentiment.
China’s civilian-fleet drills may look like preparation for war, but their real power lies in shaping fear, doubt and political pressure in Taiwan. By blurring the line between logistics and intimidation, China is testing not Taiwan’s beaches—but its nerves.
Whether these drills are a rehearsal or a mind game, Taiwan and its partners cannot afford to treat them lightly. Credible messaging, hardened defenses and real amphibious-repulsion capability—not assumptions about Chinese weakness—will decide whether coercion stays psychological or becomes kinetic.
