It’s a gloomy day in northern Taiwan and fisherman have gathered on Linkou beach to chat about the day’s haul.
We’re about 30 minutes’ drive from Taipei, and in warmer weather one might sees families under umbrellas on the sand, here to escape the hustle and bustle of the city.
At first glance, Linkou Beach looks like any other. Yet it might be one of Taiwan’s – even the world’s – most dangerous places.
This is one of up to 20 “red beaches” – sections of Taiwan’s coast that are considered likely places for China to land its troops during an invasion.
Linkou makes up part of the coastline of New Taipei City, a municipality that surrounds the capital. Of all the red beaches, this one holds the most strategic value.
It’s near Taiwan’s largest airport, which services the capital; it’s next to the Port of Taipei, a strategic deep-water port, and it borders the mouth of the Tamsui river, which flows through the centre of Taipei and into the Taiwan Strait.
Dr Tzu-yun Su is a research fellow and director at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defence and Research (INDSR), a military think tank.
He said: “Seizing this area would cut Taiwan’s primary external connections to Taipei, isolating the capital, disrupting its food supply, and undermining morale – essentially a blitzkrieg-style campaign.”
The threat posed by China was demonstrated on Tuesday, when it launched its most extensive military drills around Taiwan to date. It fired rockets towards the island and simulated a blockade of its major ports – including the Port of Taipei.
China called it a “stern warning” against “Taiwan independence separatist forces and external interference”.
Experts estimate that if China successfully lands at Linkou – and that is a big “if” – it could access Taiwan’s main control centres in less than an hour.
An invasion would require hundreds of thousands of well-trained troops, and a vast navy with cutting-edge warships, ordinary civilian barges and everything in between. It would take months or years of planning. Yet, Beijing already seems to be building up such a force.
An unmatched navy
China has one of the most active shipbuilding industries in the world. Experts estimate that its shipbuilding capacity is at least 200 times greater than the United States’, despite its much smaller military budget ($246bn in 2025 against $850bn).
Today, China has an estimated 405 warships to the US Navy’s 295, and is on track to have at least 30 more by 2030.
In fact, a recent report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) found that, while most of China’s defence firms had been losing revenue, the one area where revenue was rising was shipbuilding.
However, China wasn’t always a maritime leader. It’s only in recent decades that it has turned its navy – and its entire military apparatus – into one that rivals the world’s major powers.
Ridzwan Rahmat, the principal defence analyst at Janes, a leading military intelligence platform, said: “For a long time, the Chinese military modernisation focused on the land domains, because that was the existential threat at that time.
“But over the years, especially in the last 30 years or so, China’s existential threats have appeared from the sea, and the sea is a domain where they have been lacking compared to their adversaries.”
Today, China’s defence priorities are mostly maritime. These include disputes over islands in the South China Sea and its claims over Taiwan, which is across a nearly 100-mile wide body of water.
Xi Jinping, who came to power in 2012, has made the “reunification” of Taiwan central to his legacy. Hardly a week goes by without the president or one of his officials mentioning Beijing’s goal of bringing the country under China’s control.
The topic has had a particularly high profile in recent weeks, after Sanae Takaichi, the new prime minister of Japan, suggested that a conflict over Taiwan could trigger Japanese military involvement, prompting a fiery response from Beijing.
An $11bn arms package supplied to Taiwan by the US has similarly angered China.
A civilian armada
While the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy has hundreds of warships, these alone would not be sufficient for an invasion of Taiwan, said Tom Shugart, a former US submarine officer and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).
He said: “There’s no question whatsoever that if you just look at the grey-painted PLA Navy amphibious assault shipping, it is nowhere near enough to do an invasion.”
Instead, China has maximised its dual-use shipbuilding, where civilian vessels are kitted out with military technology. Since 2015, all civilian shipbuilders have been required to ensure that any new ships could be used by the military in the event of an emergency.
The China Classification Society, a shipping industry association, said at the time that this plan would “enable China to convert the considerable potential of its civilian fleet into military strength”.
The plan included five types of ships, which are already being tested: container, roll-on/roll-off, multi-purpose, bulk carrier and break-bulk cargo vessels.
The roll-on/roll-off vessels, known colloquially as “ro-ro ships”, are commercial transport ships with reinforced ramps that can transport large military trucks and equipment.
China has been increasing production of ro-ro ships in recent years, with an estimated 200 set to be completed between 2023 and 2026 – more than double the number manufactured between 2015 and 2022, according to the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
It has also been increasing its use of semi-submersible vessels – heavy-lift ships that can partially submerge their cargo – as helicopter carriers. They are being tested in landing trials that seem to simulate a Taiwan operation.
Six ro-ro ferries were monitored in a recent Reuters investigation, alongside six-deck cargo ships, as they sailed from shipyards near Beijing in northern China to the waters off the coast of Guangdong further south, in what appeared to be a practice landing operation.
In 2020, the Chinese Ministry of Defence carried out a training scenario using semi-submersible ships to refuel helicopters as it rehearsed rescue operations with injured soldiers.