00:00China is working to challenge U.S. undersea power by using civilian research vessels.
00:05Reuters reports that from 2024 to 2025, China deployed dozens of vessels and hundreds of sensors to form a vast
00:14ocean monitoring and mapping network.
00:16While the work has civilian purposes, naval experts say it also has military applications.
00:22The data is highly valuable for submarine warfare, and mapped areas include the waters around Taiwan, Guam, and Hawaii.
00:28It's an example of China's civil-military fusion policy that integrates scientific research with military development.
00:37To find out more about the geopolitical implications of China's undersea mapping efforts, our reporter Alan Liu spoke with Ray
00:44Powell.
00:45He's the executive director of Sea Light Foundation, an organization tracking gray zone maritime activity.
00:52The report shows China has been using research vessels and sensors to build ocean monitoring and mapping network.
00:59Can you walk us through how this is helping boost China's undersea capabilities?
01:03What China is doing in some ways are perfectly understandable, right?
01:07It's a rising great power.
01:10It wants to know what its options are for both conducting deep-sea mining.
01:17Also, of course, it's interested in what the floor of the ocean looks like in case it wants its submarines
01:22to go there, in case it wants to know where U.S. submarines are.
01:26It's interested in undersea cables.
01:28It has lots of interests that are at the bottom of the ocean.
01:31The thing to understand, I think, about China's research vessels is that essentially you have to consider all of them
01:40to be dual use.
01:42So they don't really have strictly civilian research vessels.
01:47All of their research is used for civilian and military purposes.
01:51What does this case show about China's use of civilian vessels for military purposes?
01:57We now expect many of these vessels to operate in ways that indicate that they're looking for minerals or just
02:07doing general scientific research,
02:10just curious about what the salinity at the bottom of the ocean is, or looking for even forms of life
02:17and those kinds of things.
02:18But then also sort of pivot and then work around military installations or places where undersea cables might be traveling
02:26to find out what might be of use for future military use.
02:30Overall, would you say this case shows China is gradually catching up with the U.S. in terms of maritime
02:35advantage?
02:37I'd say it's probably more than gradual.
02:39I think that they're rapidly catching up with the U.S.
02:42And they've certainly caught up in many ways in sheer numbers.
02:45So quantity has a quality of its own, as we often say.
02:49And China has certainly, when it comes to the number of ships that they're able to produce and then of
02:55particular types of ships,
02:57they're quickly beginning to, you know, they're quickly catching up.
03:00Now, this has some limits, you know, so the number of sort of high-end nuclear submarines, for example, is
03:08a lot lower,
03:08or the number of aircraft carriers is a lot lower.
03:12But when it comes to the sheer number of vessels, you know, they are quickly catching up.
03:17And they are, because they can use so many of their ships for both civilian and military purposes,
03:23the number of ships we have to be concerned about is far more than if we were just looking at
03:28the Navy.
03:30That was Ray Powell, the Executive Director of Sealight Foundation.
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