The short video is shot from a public beach in China’s Guangdong province, the unidentified filmer standing quietly by some fishing boats and a few tourists out for a walk.
Just to their right, a line of strange looking ships loom in the mist. The enormous ships are unmoving, raised above the waves by thick pylons. Drop-down bridges connect them to each other, the front one extending down to the sand.
The original video reportedly disappeared from WeChat shortly after it was uploaded, but copies circulated widely among watchers of China-Taiwan hostilities. The 19-second clip was their first clear look at what many believe are China’s newest tool for its Taiwan invasion plans.
The barge-like Shuqiao ships were first seen during the construction phase in January, and reported by Naval News. The Zhanjiang beach test showed how together they can create a loading dock from almost a kilometre out to sea – exactly what China needs to overcome one of the key challenges of any land invasion of Taiwan.
I mean, they were loading tanks on transporters, that seem pretty invadey.
Something heavy, slow, tread based, with easily controlled variable weight, that’s cheap enough to replace if anything goes wrong and something that’s been rendered useless on modern battlefields so has no further original use?
I wonder why they would use that to test barges that are far more valuable as overwater construction and resupply; rather than the absolutely silly idea of static targets for artillery, which is their only actual military function.
I mean I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. How do you people think this would function as a ‘war bridge’? You’d need hundreds. If one can touch shore then just use a normal barge, not this Wylie e coyote nonsense. If one can’t touch the shore, a hundred of them in an in movable chain that takes hours to align won’t be able to.
It was a converted car transport. They already knew it floated with a load of cars.
And a load of cars is far less heavy and less dynamically loaded than say, a crane. Or a group of construction equipment.
Again, if this worked, any single barge in existence would work better. A Wylie e coyote bridge made of hundreds of barges is too ridiculous even for the most westoid brain version of China. This is ‘dem Chinese eat Muslim babies to take our jobs’ level of silly.