New Delhi: Just three months after its first visit this year, the Chinese research vessel Xiang Yang Hong 03 is back at a Maldivian port on Friday (April 26).
Local media outlet Adhadhu reported that the ship Xiang Yang Hong 03 was docked at the Thilafushi industrial island’s harbour on Friday morning. As per the report, the Maldivian government had not disclosed the return of the ship, even though it had issued a statement at the time of its first visit in February.
It was first reported in January that Xiang Yang Hong 03 was on its way to the Maldives. This news was greeted with interest as it came within a few months of the new President Mohamed Muizzu winning the presidential elections and being sworn into office in November 2023.
While Muizzu has denied being “pro-China”, his government is widely perceived to be friendlier to Beijing. His key campaign promise had been to ensure that Indian troops stationed in the Maldives to operate three aircraft for humanitarian sorties in the country should be withdrawn. After negotiations, India has now replaced the crews with civilians from a state aviation firm.
The Maldives had also given a notice to India that it planned to terminate a bilateral agreement that allowed New Delhi to participate in hydrographic surveys of the Maldivian territorial waters.
The Muizzu government got a big boost when the ruling coalition won three-fourths of the seats in the parliamentary election last week.
The first docking of Xiang Yang Hong 03 this year took place on February 22 after “spending about a month near the boundary of the Maldives’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)”. After its port call, the ship had gone back to the borders of the Maldivian EEZ in early March, and is back again at the dock.
“Therefore, Xiang Yang Hong 03 has been active inside or near Maldives’ territory since January,” said the news report.
Earlier in January, Maldives’ foreign ministry had said that China had sought clearance for “Xiang Yang Hong 03 at Malé for “rotation of personnel and replenishment”. The foreign ministry had also claimed that the Chinese vessel would “not be conducting any research while in [Maldivian] waters”.
A report from the Washington-based think tank CSIS in 2020 observed that Chinese research vessels, many of them owned by Chinese organisations affiliated to the military, had the potential of gathering undersea data for submarine detection, essential in naval reconnaissance.
