Perhaps they mean commercially produces ones. To my knowledge these have never gone past experimental prototype stages.

"I made this."

Ground effect vehicles are basically airplanes that are forced to fly really, really low. They take off from water and cruise just a few meters above the surface. At that altitude, the air gets compressed between the wing and the ground or water, which creates a huge cushion of extra lift. This lets the vehicle carry way more weight than a normal plane of the same size and power, making it incredibly efficient for hauling cargo over water. The trick is that it only works over flat surfaces like oceans or lakes, and the piloting can be tricky because you're skimming the waves at high speed without actually being able to climb to a higher altitude. It's a neat piece of engineering that trades operational flexibility for raw lifting power.

That's pretty cool. The article did not explain that and I stopped reading halfway through. I imagine many readers were confused.

true, but only as prototypes that never went into mass production

This one here in this post is only a prototype. The ekranoplans where actually used.

If I remember right the USSR had all kinds of strange for the time vessels designed and built for use in the Caspian and Sea of Asov.

Yeah but you can't make Sino Number #1 propaganda if you include the others.