“It is interesting to think whether the ferries are primarily civilian ships converted to military use, or military ships used currently as civilian ships?”
My understanding is that every ship including fishing vessels can be used as a military auxiliary. If not a weapons platform, then as a surveillance platform. The Japanese did the same thing, building dual use cruise ships that could be used as auxiliary cruisers. The Japanese actually sent two of these vessels to attack in the Indian Ocean. They attacked an oil tanker and its tiny escort ship. The oil tanker ignored the escort ship’s order to run for it and turned into the attack with its deck gun. The two ships so badly damaged one of the Japanese ships that it sank. The oil tanker got away and the Indian Corvette sank. The remaining Japanese ship got away, but the incident caused the Japanese to abandon the idea of sending basically armed civilian ships into action.
The CCP has several thousand ships of various sizes and types. Fortunately, there are only three beaches in Taiwan that could be used for a landing. Those are within artillery range of high mountains. It is hard to say if the CCP is just huffing and puffing and they’ll blow the island down. I think that Xi is just like Putin in that nobody is going to tell him that his army isn’t ready to take Taiwan in one easy stroke. (You know, four days and its all over.)
The Taiwanese have installed pipes underwater to flood those beaches with gasoline, amongst other things. They are quite ready to humiliate the PLA.
The PLA will also need to send a large contingent of counselors as the PLA soldiers get very upset when kept in the field for a week.
That reminded me of the proposed invasion of Japan. They were not a bunch of dumb gooks. They knew exactly where the Americans would land based on their understanding of what we required for an invasion of that size.