China has a collection of dozens of Roll-on, Roll-off (RoRo) commercial transports that have had their ramps reinforced to be able to use heavy equipment. This has led to a number of people counting them as Chinese amphibious assets. They have used some of them for training exercises with the Chinese marines.
The actual count of these is 40 or 63 or more (I have seen various figures). They are commercial ships and used regularly for commercial shipping. As such, at any given moment they are scattered across the world.
Now if China could gather dozens of these together, then they might be able to increase Chinese lift capacity by tens of thousands. There are some real problems with that.
1. They really can’t be used in the first wave. They usually require docks to unload at and cannot be used across the beach. As such, they really don’t increase the Chinese first wave capacity of around 20,000 troops.
Now, theoretically, they could load up with LCMs, LCUs and ZDP-05s and unload off shore at sea to contribute to a first wave. This is a difficult arrangement but could add 10-20K troops to the first wave. Still, it does not appear to be how they would be used.
2. They do require docks to unload at. This means China either have to take a port in the first couple of days of the operation or they would have to set up at sea docks. If Taiwan is properly defending, taking ports in the first week will be difficult. Furthermore, if they doing their job properly, once those ports are taken the dock areas should be difficult to use.
Now, China does have mobile docks, similar to the U.S. These are difficult to maintain in a hostile environment. They are difficult to maintain in the non-hostile environment. The U.S. recently deployed one in Gaza and had lots of problems. This was done in peacetime, in the Mediterranean (a more peaceful body of water than the South China Sea) and by the nominally most experience amphibious force on the planet. So, China would be looking at setting up mobile docks on the first or second day of an invasion, which then would mostly likely become prime targets. The RoRo ships would need functional docks to unload.
3. They would have to be gathered from across the world and this would telegraph the blow by weeks if not months. These are commercial ships scattered across the world doing commercial transport. They would have to stop doing commerce, return to China and be readied for military operations. Hard to hide that. If Taiwan knows for weeks that China is coming, then they can start mobilizing. So, instead of facing over 100,000 deployed troops, they will face hundreds of thousands. Has China gained an advantage by doing this?
In the end, people seem to believe that the RoRo ships gives China the lift capacity that it needs to invade Taiwan. It does not seem to do this. Furthermore, an amphibious operation would be greatly assisted by surprise, or at least limiting the warning to hours, vice days. Using RoRo’s does the opposite. They are not a first wave asset, and maybe not even a second or third wave asset. They are an asset after an attack as already been conducted, a port had been seized, it can be protected and is operational. It is a supplemental capability to Chinese amphibious operations.
