China's military has held the largest maneuvers of its Dong Hai No. 7 exercises so far, with tens of thousands of militiamen mobilized to augment regular troops in amphibious landing drills along the southeastern coast, defense sources in Taiwan said yesterday.The tens of thousands of militiamen are the cannon fodder to soak up whatever the ROC has ... the regular troops follow after the appropriate level of attrition is achieved.The militiamen and an unknown number of civilian ships were the key elements of a series of intensive amphibious landing drills on islands off Fujian Province, mainly Dongshan island, during the last week of July, the sources said.
The Chinese military did not send a large number of regular troops to participate in the drills, they said.
This incongruity between the PLAN amphibious sealift capacity and the planning requirements for an invasion of Taiwan is likely behind the drafting of civilian cargo ships into auxiliary service. The difference in actual versus required capacity alone explains the study of commandeering cargo ships, and it may well explain the research into arming them as well.Sounds like its right out of the pages of Dragon's Fury
In that series, I have the Chinese developing and building thousands of cheap, throw-away LCM's and augmenting them with hundreds of commerical conversions ... which they arm.