Posted on 07/27/2021 10:14:58 AM PDT by Retain Mike
When a Chinese ferry joined the People’s Liberation Army Navy for an amphibious landing exercise in July 2020, observers noticed something different.
It’s not unusual for Chinese merchant vessels to participate in the PLA’s operations and Bang Chui Dao, a 15,560-ton roll-on roll-off ferry, has been used before to support military transportation exercises. But where such ships might have been limited to accessing port terminals before, the ferry’s stern ramp had been converted to enable it to launch and recover a 26-ton ZTD-05, an amphibious armored vehicle used by the Chinese military, according to a brief published by The Jamestown Foundation earlier this month.
“The pictures tell 1,000 words,” said Thomas Shugart, a retired Navy captain and fellow in the defense program at the Center for a New American Security. “And it seems like we know that they, in fairly calm seas, they did develop and test, it appears successfully, a ramp that gave them the capability to turn one of their civilian roll-on, roll-off carriers into a delivery vessel for amphibious assault vehicles.”
(Excerpt) Read more at news.usni.org ...
That was in the time of Mao and the whole country was in revolt - the communists the nationalists the Japanese - don’t be fooled by the past actions. The people have had a taste of western civ and want more which costs money - to marry a guy has to own property which is usually an apartment building or an apartment the purchase runs 1.5 mill US.
They borrow from banks, loan sharks, family. If the guy is killed in war then his family is plunged into debt they cannot repay. One guy here of there no biggy, but not 10s of thousands or millions at once is another story and the CCP is terrified of that outcome.
Mao murdered 74 odd million and another 25 million have been murdered since, probably mostly Uygurs, Tibetans, and other minorities.
And yes they revolted, but those revolts were not published in western press because they were unsuccessful. I forget how many divisions of the PLA were sent to quash the revolt(s) in Tibet.
Oh, I so understand. By my time overseas, the LVTP5 had been through years of the Vietnam war. They were just barely buoyant and leaked from every seam. I was a Navy boat group officer and was so happy when my duty did not put me inside one those.
You pray your bilge pumps and watertight seals work REALLY good!
It’s not in their national psyche. They are not spontaneous uprisers. They have thousands of years history of regular people not freelancing.
The Chinese of today are the submissives who descended from those who weren’t murdered in the tens of millions.
Rising up isn’t in their DNA.
And the seal leaks! It leaks way below the capacity of the bilge pumps, but terrifying just the same because you think you are in a leaking, floating tank.
And then someone barfs...
One good sized nuclear weapon in the Taiwanese Straight would end it.
Loaded with amphibs, fuel, and munitions - just one.
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