Shuiqiao Bridge Barges Expand & Extend PRC Amphibious Landing Capabilities, Threatening Taiwan

In a new echo of U.S. construction of Mulberry Harbors to support the 1944 D-Day Invasion, China recently began construction of 3-5+ (perhaps 7 and counting) Shuiqiao bridge barges at Guangzhou Shipyard International (GSI) Longxue Island shipyard in Guangdong Province, and has now been observed exercising with them—at a nearby beach close to the Southern Theater Command Navy Headquarters in Zhanjiang, Guangdong—in an extended road-like three-ship end-to-end configuration. Naval analyst Tom Shugart reveals that the haze gray-painted causeway ships did not transmit AIS signals and estimates their combined bridge-span length at roughly 850 meters.

The “narwhal-tusked” Shuiqiaos’ most distinctive feature is a 120-meter-long “Bailey Bridge” deployable from its bow across water, mud, seawalls, mines, or other obstacles. The unique vessel’s other key attributes include up to eight “jack up” spuds (legs) extendable to the seabed for stability and a self-supporting stern ramp to which other ships can dock and deploy armored vehicles, potentially in a lengthy ship-to-ship configuration.?

The innovative Shuiqiao platform, for which there is currently no international parallel or obvious commercial use, may represent the missing piece in the puzzle for China to be able to attempt to deploy ferry-delivered, follow-on forces in support of an amphibious assault to the most advantageous locations along Taiwan’s coastline and thereby be able to utilize commercial ships without holding a port. A single ship can extend over key obstacles and other hazards. Connecting multiple ships in end-to-end configuration, preliminary efforts at which have now been observed, could offer a lengthy bridge indeed.

The Shuiqiaos’ emergence suggests that China has learned from its own weather-sensitive exercises with amphibious-deployed causeways and the U.S. military’s failed Gaza pier that (1) hastily constructed ship-to-shore extensions are highly vulnerable and (2) that leveraging China’s shipbuilding superiority to produce purpose-built ships capable of themselves connecting as modular bridge and/or parallel elements to ensure a rapid delivery of follow-on ground forces offers a better answer to the particular problems that Beijing seeks to solve. These problems include improving its cross-Strait amphibious landing capabilities beyond what CMSI was previously able to observe and assess in our recent book. Be sure to watch this space!

Further reading:

• H.I. Sutton, “China Suddenly Building Fleet of Special Barges Suitable for Taiwan Landings,” Naval News, 10 January 2025 (updated 13 March 2025).
• Chen Yu-fu and William Hetherington, “PLA’s Special Barges Are to Override Mines, Expert Says,” Taipei Times, 14 January 2025, 3.