A container missile ship can be strategic signaling

Is the Chinese container missile ship merely a test bed for a concept?

The interpretation offered is that it also publicizes the concept and provokes attention out of proportion to the cost of one modified ship.

One interpretation of the pictured container ship is that it advertises a concept as well as testing it. Modifying a single ship is considered relatively inexpensive compared with the attention its photographs attract. The reaction abroad could therefore exceed the scale of the demonstrated capability. This is an interpretation of its publicity effect, without evidence of a particular intended foreign response.