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Chinese ship ‘caught stealing’ wreck of British WWII ship last year, seized again for illegal acts

Posted on by angelo



In a recent As part of the crackdown on Chinese illegal maritime activities, Malaysian law enforcement and naval personnel detained the Chinese salvage vessel MV Chuan Hong 68 on July 1 for operating illegally.

The vessel, previously involved in the illicit extraction of scrap metal from the Second World War wrecks of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, was seized this time for breaching administrative formalities.

News of the detention was first spread online, first by an X (formerly Twitter) user named Elizabeth Vstx. The user posted photos showing the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) boarding and detaining the MV Chuan Hong 68 off the coast of Tanjung Hantu in Perak state.

The vessel is located across the Strait of Malacca, about 300 nautical miles northwest of Singapore. The MMEA inspection found that the MV Chuan Hong 68 was carrying 60 unregistered LPG tanks, each weighing 14kg.

The ship’s crew consisted of 20 Chinese, 20 Bangladeshis and one Malaysian. The ship was detained for failure to produce original ship documents, lack of port clearance and irregularities in the crew manifest.

The vessel is being investigated under the Merchant Shipping Ordinance 1952 and the Controlled Goods Act 1961. From the photographs, it appears the vessel’s crane has been repainted since it was detained in May last year.

Although no illegal scrap metal was found this time, the presence of the vessel near a World War II wreck has raised serious concerns. In a statement, the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency stressed the importance of complying with maritime laws to avoid detention.

“Malaysian Maritime insists that the maritime community should always obey established laws to avoid any action being taken,” the agency said.

Speaking to EurAsian Times, maritime security expert Pooja Bhatt said, “The incident of the Chinese salvage vessel Chuan Hong 68 is interesting but not unique as ship owners are using the grey areas of international maritime laws to undertake illegal activities. Although the vessel is a salvage vessel carrying suspicious tools such as LPG cylinders that could be used for underwater metal cutting with gas, the vessel itself was not found to be engaged in any salvage act.”

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Bhatt stressed: “At the same time, the vessel was strategically located just outside the 12-nautical-mile zone of the territorial sea, so the coastal state cannot have absolute jurisdictional rights against vessels. However, the Malaysian authorities have imposed other charges on the vessel, such as not having proper documentation and permits, and have arrested it for the right reasons.”

She explained: “These cases are not new or unique and pose a threat to national security in various ways. Therefore, such incidents must be reported in the media and recorded by coastal states in order to raise awareness and take political measures against such incidents in the future.”

The vessel and its crew are under ongoing investigation. The incident highlights the ongoing challenges in regulating China’s illegal maritime activities and the vigilance required to enforce laws and protect territorial waters.

Controversy surrounds illegal removal of WWII debris

Last year, Malaysian authorities seized the salvage vessel Chuan Hong 68 off Johor for allegedly dismantling and removing the wreckage of the Royal Navy battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse.

These ships were sunk by Japanese forces during their invasion of the Malay Peninsula in December 1941 and are designated as protected war graves.

In May 2023, locals filmed the ship unloading what appeared to be a large, muddy cannon at a Malaysian scrapyard. During an inspection in May 2023, authorities discovered rusty artillery shells and other metal debris aboard the Chuan Hong 68.

If convicted of desecrating the war graves, the crew could face up to two years in prison, the New Straits Times reported. At the time, the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) suggested the ship could potentially be involved in the illegal salvage of British warship wrecks.

In January 2024, the Johor Police Unexploded Ordnance Team responded to reports of aging artillery shells found in the same scrapyard where Chuan Hong 68 had unloaded its cargo.

Picture
Chuan Hong Ship 68.

Among the items discovered were two 130mm shells, equivalent to the 5.25-inch guns used by HMS Prince of Wales, and 55 ageing 40mm shells, standard for the Royal Navy’s anti-aircraft guns during the Second World War.

Malaysian authorities have not provided any new information on the case over the past year. The vessel has since repeatedly returned to the same operational area northeast of the Singapore Strait, often disappearing from Automatic Identification System (AIS) tracking for extended periods.

The area corresponds to where the ship was detained in 2023 and is close to the last known location of HMS Prince of Wales.

The vessel, measuring 122 meters by 32 meters and weighing 8,352 gross tons, is registered to Fujian Ya Rui Marine, a company based in Lianjiang County, Fuzhou, China.

The company’s website describes its business as “the destruction of sunken ships at home and abroad.” However, China says the ship was chartered by a Malaysian company.

The activities of the Chuan Hong 68 highlight the complex and often murky nature of the sea salvage industry, raising questions about international maritime regulations and the protection of historic war graves.

The strategic motivations behind such activities

Shashank S Patel, a geopolitical and defense analyst, told EurAsian Times: “In addition to trying to reestablish their maritime boundaries in the extended South China Sea under the hegemonic concept of the ten-dash line, the Chinese are claiming all assets above and below the high water mark. Chinese ships have been plundering many resources for decades but remained unnoticed until the 2000s.”

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Patel explained the possible reasons for the Chinese ship salvage activity. Patel said: “The huge availability of pre-atomic steel from sunken British and Japanese ships is a treasure trove for the Chinese government. Their upcoming space missions, as well as their medical and scientific equipment, require raw steel – free of radionuclides – to maximise the accuracy of sophisticated instruments. Steel scrap is not exposed to post-atomic isotopes such as plutonium-239, strontium-90, cesium-137 and technetium-99, making it highly accurate in the construction of sensitive detectors.”

He further added that the pre-war salvaged steel, which is hardly available, is five times more valuable than normal steel and is widely demanded in scientific endeavors and historical research worldwide.

“Most spacecraft use research instruments for precise results made from this steel free of radioactive ions. China has also used this steel for dark matter experiments to build shields and structures for its detectors,” he explained.

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Patel highlighted another aspect, saying that the wide availability of artillery shells from sunken warships provides Chinese authorities with a free source of weapons-grade brass and copper. With some minor mechanical modifications, these materials can be easily reused in many tanks and anti-aircraft guns.

He also pointed out: “These dredgers disguised as fishing boats serve as a secondary source of intelligence gathering, surveillance and reconnaissance for the Chinese PLA Navy on the high seas. They are used for unofficial tracking of supply chains and their support frigates. The location – Tanjung Hantu from where the MV Chuan Hong 68 is detained, is a Malaysian military firing range where its rocket artillery brigade exercises every year.”

He continued, “After 2015, China secretly launched its global seabed survey program using its naval assets. To analyze choke points and strengthen its seabed survey, these unofficial salvage barges were repeatedly used to enter the EEZs of many countries in shallow waters. The activities intensified after 2021 in the South China Sea near the coasts of Malaysia and the Philippines.

In conclusion, Patel said, “It can be said that illegal Chinese ships have already salvaged many ships and submarine wrecks from many war zones around the world. But the British (HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse) and Japanese (IJN destroyer Sagari and troopships Hiyoshi Maru and Katori Maru) ships dead in the Indian Ocean are more lucrative for them in the region.”