VIGIL CONSILIUMSearch
Context. Not headlines.
Equipment catalogue · shared across conflicts

Naval vessel

Type 071 amphibious transport docks

The PLA Navy's amphibious workhorse — less discussed than the big assault ships and considerably more relevant to how amphibious lift actually works.

Type 071ChinaIn service from 2007; the class completed over roughly a decade and a half.

Status as of
2026-09
Last reviewed
2026-09-09

AssessmentHigh confidence

Recognition context, not a stat sheet. The catalogue covers major publicly documented systems relevant to the conflicts Vigil covers — not an exhaustive order of battle. No quantities, availability or current allocations are recorded.

The recordWhat this system is, where it comes from, who operates it and which of Vigil’s modules it is relevant to — with the evidence each of those rests on.

FieldedEvidence: Documented
Silhouette · not to scale

Record

FamilyType 071
VariantsType 071 Yuzhao-class landing platform dock
OriginChina
ManufacturerChinese state shipbuilding enterprises
EraIn service from 2007; the class completed over roughly a decade and a half.
Appears inTaiwan Strait

Conflict relevance

This is the catalogue's single record for this system. It is relevant to the module below; each module's Force Atlas shows how it is used there.

Taiwan Strait · Force Atlas

Operators

People's Republic of China · Primary operator

Battlefield role

Amphibious transport: moving troops, vehicles and landing craft, and discharging them through a well dock and from a helicopter deck. It is the ship type that converts an amphibious force into a deployable one, and the reason it belongs in this catalogue is that the lift question — not the specialist landing ship question — is where published analysis of any cross-strait contingency concentrates.

Strengths

Substantial vehicle and personnel capacity with both surface and aviation discharge, produced in enough numbers to constitute a real lift capability rather than a demonstration one. Also the class most used for the PLA Navy's overseas deployments, evacuations and exercises, which is a genuine dual role rather than a euphemism.

Limitations

Amphibious lift is the constraint every serious treatment of a cross-strait landing identifies, and the naval amphibious fleet — all classes together — is consistently assessed as insufficient on its own for an operation at that scale, which is why analysis of the problem turns quickly to civilian roll-on/roll-off shipping instead. Large amphibious ships are also extremely vulnerable in the phase where they matter. Vigil publishes no lift-capacity assessment, no hull counts and no landing-scenario analysis, and records the existence of the capability rather than an estimate of what it could do.

Campaign relevance

Derived: a participant organisation in these campaigns carries a typed equipment association with this system. That is not the same as documented use of the system in the campaign itself.

Visual identification

A large slab-sided ship with a long flat helicopter deck aft, a blocky superstructure forward of it and a stern gate at the waterline for the well dock. Distinguished from the newer assault ships by having a partial flight deck with a superstructure ahead of it rather than a full-length flat deck with an island to one side.

Documented conflict use

In service since 2007 and used extensively for overseas deployments, exercises and evacuation operations as well as amphibious training. Vessels of the class appear in reporting of the large theatre exercises around Taiwan. Vigil records reported presence and publishes no counts, dispositions or employment detail.

Branch & service operators

FullConfidence: HighSources: US Department of Defense — China Military Power Report↗ · IISS Military Balance↗ · CSIS China Power Project and ChinaPower analysis↗ · RAND Corporation — Taiwan and Indo-Pacific research↗MethodologyCorrections

Assessed as of2026-09Last reviewed2026-09-09