Albanese ‘would prefer’ Chinese research vessel was not off the coast of Australia

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/mar/31/albanese-chinese-research-ship-australia-coast-tan-suo-yi-hao

Version 0 of 1.

Tan Suo Yi Hao has been in New Zealand on a joint research operation and is not expected to visit any Australian ports

Anthony Albanese says he “would prefer” a Chinese research vessel was not sitting off the coast of Victoria and stressed it will be closely monitored by the Australian defence force.

The research vessel Tan Suo Yi Hao was directly south of the Victorian town of Portland on Monday afternoon and travelling west after a port call in Wellington.

“I would prefer that it wasn’t there,” Albanese told reporters. “But we live in circumstances where, just as Australia has vessels in the South China Sea and vessels in the Taiwan Strait and a range of areas, this vessel is there.

“It’s been in New Zealand on a joint research operation and this isn’t the first time that a similar vessel has been around the Australian coast. It occurred in 2020, just to give one example. Australia, as you would expect, is monitoring this.”

Another Chinese research vessel, the Xiang Yang Hong 01, was detected and tracked in Australian waters in 2020.

The Tan Suo Yi Hao was travelling close to Australia’s subsea communication cables. These cables are critical infrastructure that allow Australians to send everything from emails to military secrets.

The ship has not announced plans to visit any Australian ports and was expected to return to China in late April. Its current course was in line with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Albanese said Australian authorities would track the movements of Tan Suo Yi Hao and added “we won’t – for obvious reasons – broadcast everything that we’re doing”.

“But we’re keeping an eye on this,” Albanese said.

The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, said: “We know exactly where it is, we know the direction it is heading, and the speed it’s moving in that direction.”

According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Tan Suo Yi Hao has 11 laboratories onboard and is capable of conducting deep-sea surveillance.

Get the most important news as it breaks

after newsletter promotion

The Tan Suo Yi Hao was in New Zealand as part of an eight-nation scientific venture and helped New Zealand scientists reach the bottom of the Puysegur trench for the first time, according to local media.

The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research’s marine biologist, Sadie Mills, told New Zealand media the vessel enabled scientists to reach locations previously out of reach and that she hoped “they come back and look at the trenches again”.

In 2023, the Tan Suo Yi Hao helped a Chinese-New Zealand crew of scientists 10,000 metres to the bottom of the Kermadec Trench.

The presence of three People’s Liberation Army-Navy vessels – the Jiangkai-class frigate Hengyang, the Renhai-class cruiser Zunyi and the Fuchi-class replenishment vessel Weishanhu – became a political issue earlier this month after being detected off north-east Queensland.

The defence minister, Richard Marles, vowed to follow the three ships as they tracked the Australian coast south before crossing the Bass Strait and entering the Great Australian Bight.

Those three navy ships did not cross into Australia’s territorial waters – 12 nautical miles from the coastline – but were inside Australia’s exclusive economic zone. The ships did not breach international law and the defence force has said its monitoring of the fleet was “routine”.

Security experts have long raised concerns about “dual-use” technology on sophisticated Chinese research vessels, including those that operate in Antarctica, also being used for intelligence gathering.

Late last year, the Australian government invited Chinese icebreaking vessels, which also host scientific surveillance equipment, to visit Hobart. China has previously docked its Antarctic research vessels, Xue Long and Xue Long 2, in Hobart before travelling to Antarctica.