by Emmitt Barry, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – China is reportedly building “D-Day style” landing barges specifically designed to deploy People’s Liberation Army (PLA) vehicles onto Taiwanese beaches, suggesting preparations for a potential full-scale invasion, according to the UK Telegraph.
Naval News reported that up to five landing barges are under construction at Guangzhou Shipyard in southern China. Resembling the Mulberry Harbours from the World War II Normandy invasion, these barges feature novel designs and rapid construction. Although a smaller prototype surfaced in 2022, the current batch has only recently appeared.
Since 2022, China has developed landing barges that can be built in months, providing a key capability to connect nearly any ship to the shore.
These barges could enable the PRC to land at previously unsuitable sites, including rocky or soft beaches, and deliver tanks directly to firm ground or roads. This flexibility allows China to choose new landing sites, complicating Taiwanese defenses, and effectively deploy a mobile port across the strait.
Dr. Emma Salisbury, Sea Power Research Fellow at the Council on Geostrategy, told Naval News that these mobile piers seem particularly suited for an invasion of Taiwan.
“Any invasion of Taiwan from the mainland would require a large number of ships to transport personnel and equipment across the Strait quickly, particularly land assets like armored vehicles,” she explained. Salisbury added, “As preparation for an invasion, or at least to give China the option as leverage, I would expect to see a build-up of construction of ships that could accomplish this transportation.”
In the past decade, the PLA Navy has expanded its amphibious fleet with eight landing docks, three assault ships for troops and helicopters, and a large assault ship capable of launching high-performance drones, all equipped to deploy landing craft, according to the Telegrah.
Tensions between China and Taiwan, a vital U.S. partner in the Indo-Pacific, remain high as Beijing refuses to recognize the island’s independence. In his New Year’s message, Chinese leader Xi Jinping declared that Taiwan’s “reunification” with China is inevitable.
“The people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family. No one can sever our family bonds, and no one can stop the historical trend of national reunification,” Xi Jinping stated on China’s state broadcaster, CCTV.
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
More Worthy News
U.S.-based singer and rap star Nicki Minaj brought her global profile to the United Nations on Tuesday to draw attention to the mass killings of Christians in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, where more than 7,000 Christians were murdered in the first seven months of this year, according to the watchdog group Intersociety.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) used his first White House visit in seven years to deliver a blunt message: Riyadh is ready to join the Abraham Accords — but only if there is a real, irreversible path toward a two-state solution.
In one of the most lopsided votes in recent congressional history, the House of Representatives voted 427-1 on Tuesday to force the Department of Justice to release all unclassified documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. The Senate quickly followed suit, passing the measure by unanimous consent, sending the bill to President Donald Trump–who announced this week that he would sign it.
As the United Nations Security Council approved a U.S.-drafted resolution laying out a pathway toward a Palestinian state, new polling shows Israeli public opinion moving sharply in the opposite direction.
Martin Bosma of the anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) has lost his bid for another term as speaker of the Dutch House of Representatives, in a vote signaling shifting parliamentary dynamics after last month’s election.
A visibly angry U.S. President Donald J. Trump said the broadcast license of U.S. broadcaster ABC should be “taken away” after one of its reporters confronted him over his ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — an exchange that played out with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman seated beside him in the Oval Office.
Palestinian attackers killed an Israeli man and wounded three others in a combined ramming-and-stabbing assault in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank) on Tuesday, shortly after the United Nations Security Council endorsed U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s peace initiative for Gaza, Israeli officials said.