A Chinese government ship is currently sitting off the South Australian coast tracking a similar route to an Australian deep-sea submarine cable.
The vessel is considered a ‘spy ship’ and is within Australia’s exclusive economic zone.
The deep-sea research ship has the ability to drop a mini submarine that can reach up to 10,000 metres below sea-level.
The ship is said to not only be a research vessel but one that collects intelligence.
If it is following Australia’s submarine cable, it could be mapping or even signalling that it has the capability to cut the cable.
It had been in Wellington on a joint exploration exercise with New Zealand.
But instead of following the most direct route back to China, it is circling the Australian coast.
It travelled through the Tasman Sea, between New Zealand and Australia, then into the Bass Strait before heading to South Australia.
Chinese scientific research vessel Tan Suo Yi Hao is currently off the coast of South Australia
The ship, called ‘Tan Suo’ is following a similar route to the one taken by a Chinese warship last month where it conducted live-fire exercises off the coast of the Tasman Sea.
The ship is 94 metres long and nearly 18 metres wide and the China Daily has reported that it has 11 laboratories onboard along with data processing and information centres and ‘serves as a base for the submersible, deep-sea expeditions and engineering.’
After its maiden voyage in 2016, the President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bai Chunli said it was ‘a milestone for China in terms of deep-sea expeditions’.
Indian maritime security institute, the National Maritime Foundation, has outlines come of the dual capabilities of the Chinese operated submersibles.
‘The dual-use nature of such submersibles also needs to be kept in mind, particularly in the context of interfering with undersea fibre-optic cables, the incidents of which have witnessed a sharp increase over the last two years,’ it said.
