The origin of the Type 79 series LSM dates back in the 1970s, when North Vietnam asked China to produce a landing ship capable of carrying around 200 tons of cargo with maximum speed of 12 kn, but more importantly, the manufacturing technique had to be simply so that it must be able to be built quickly in large numbers.

[1] Design work by the 708th Research Institute for the Type 079 took more than two years, lasting from 1971 to 1973, and construction began in May 1974 at Guangzhou Shipyard International, and the first ship was launched on July 22, 1976.

Due to changes in Sino-Vietnamese relations, the end customer became the PLAN instead of the Vietnam People's Navy.

Trials between December 1972 to January 1977 revealed the performance was somewhat satisfactory, but the speed was slow and the ability to operate in bad weather condition was poor, with the maximum sea state allowed to operate being sea state 6.

More complex machinery was added, which lead to the increase of crew members to 109, more than 3 times of that of the original Type 079I.