Just weeks after Australia was circumnavigated by a flotilla of advanced Chinese warships, a Chinese research vessel is now mapping underwater cables off Australia’s coast.
From the Lying Press:
The opposition leader has slammed the prime minister’s response to a Chinese research ship south of Australia, saying he believes the vessel is gathering intelligence and mapping the route of Australia’s undersea cables.
The dual purpose vessel the Tan Suo Yi Hao was conducting joint research with New Zealand scientists before travelling west along Australia’s southern coastline, outside of Australia’s exclusive economic zone.
NZ media have reported the submersibles took Chinese and NZ scientists to the bottom of the Puysegur Trench, 6 kilometres below sea level, on a joint research mission.
Anthony Albanese told reporters in Perth on Monday that he’d “prefer” the ship wasn’t in Australian waters, but suggested China hadn’t broken international law.
“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,” he said.
Mr Albanese said the Australian Defence Force was monitoring the ship as it makes its way back to China.
This is incredible doublespeak from the Prime Minister. Australian vessels in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait aren’t there to count fish, they’re there as vassals of the American Empire, serving its purpose of containing the Chinese Empire and deterring an invasion of Taiwan. The sailing of military or “research” vessels off the coasts of rivals states is no trivial matter. It is a high stakes geopolitical game which always carries the risk of escalation to war.
But Peter Dutton took aim at Mr Albanese’s response, accusing him of “weakness” on national security.
He said government advice had been conflicting, and that it was unclear whether the Australian Border Force or the ADF were monitoring the vessel.
“It is unbelievable that the prime minister can’t explain to the Australian people what is happening here,” he told reporters in Melbourne on Tuesday.
“Of course, there’s a collection of intelligence and of course, there is a mapping of undersea cables.”
…
Analysts say the vessel is likely surveying underwater features and the route of a 5,000 kilometre long subsea communications cable, which connects Sydney to Perth, before branching out to Singapore.
It’s not the first time Chinese vessels have mapped Australian waters, with a similar research ship mapping waters off Australia’s Western coastline in 2020.
But over the last 12 months, Russian and Chinese vessels have been accused of deliberately damaging undersea cables in both Taiwan and Europe — drawing attention to how they can be targeted to disrupt the internet and essential services.
Mr Dutton said Australia “requires connectivity to the rest of the world as an island nation,” adding “the way we communicate with our partners and allies of the rest of the world is contingent on those cables.”
It should go without saying that the Biden administration treacherously sabotaged the Nordstream pipeline in 2022, harming its own purported European allies. As reported by the Richardson Post, China is merely developing the same capabilities:
Chinese researchers from state-affiliated institutions claimed to have developed a powerful deep-sea device: a cable cutter capable of severing heavily fortified communication and power lines at depths of up to 4,000 metres – nearly twice the depth of the world’s deepest undersea cable.
The new design, published last month in the peer-reviewed Chinese journal Mechanical Engineer and first reported by the South China Morning Post, emerges amid growing concerns over the vulnerability of Taiwan’s critical infrastructure.
Recently, suspicious damage to the island’s undersea cables has fueled fears of Chinese efforts to undermine the island’s communications with the outside world.
The concern is that in the event of an invasion, China could sever the undersea cables around Taiwan, sowing panic among its public and potentially disrupting the island’s military communication with the U.S. and other partners…
A Chinese team has also developed a small robot that can operate in the world’s deepest sea trench under extremely high pressure…
The team will boost the endurance and efficiency of the small deep-sea robot ostensibly to support marine resource development, archaeology, and environmental monitoring – but it clearly also has military application.
Also reported by the Richardson Post, China’s ability to destroy undersea communications is being complemented with the ability to destroy satellites in orbit.
China is making fast progress in building space weapons. “The Chinese ISR”—intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance—”capabilities are become very capable,” said Gen. Guetlein. “They have gone from what we used to call a ‘Kill Chain’ to a ‘Kill Mesh.’” A Kill Mesh combines ISR satellites with an array of weapons systems….
“The recent demonstration of Chinese ‘dogfighting’ capabilities in space is an indicator that Beijing means to use force on earth. By targeting sensitive U.S. military satellites, the People’s Liberation Army can render us deaf, dumb, and blind, long before it strikes.” — Brandon Weichert, to Gatestone, March 2025.
In conjunction with the modernisation and expansion of its military, and the development of a huge energy, transport and manufacturing infrastructure, what China is attempting here is the ability to go toe to toe with the US military in the event of war.
Similarly, President Trump is reintroducing tariffs, modernising America’s military and working to coalesce Canada and Greenland into the United States to give America the industrial scale, technological capability and geographic size to compete with the growing Asian superpowers.
This does not mean war will occur, or even that it is inevitable. We are however for all intents and purposes in a new Cold War. The emerging multipolar order (which so conveniently lines up with the WEF’s predictions) has created a new arms race.
For Australia, this means our situation is dire. In the event of war, we really don’t know which way the Americans will go.
Millions of Indian and Chinese “immigrants” purportedly imported to make us stronger will either scarper, cower, or just straight up turncoat at the first sign of trouble.
The “conservative” “opposition” in the current flaccid election campaign is promising a slight reduction in immigration (we don’t believe them) and has an admittedly genuinely good energy policy with regard to the development of nuclear power, which will in the long run allow Australia to develop a nuclear deterrent.
But then there’s the whole humiliation fetish.
Australia PM Anthony Albanese plays Holi.
Pc: Indian community is the 2nd-largest migrant group in Australia, behind only those born in Englandpic.twitter.com/0sKjhZgfba
— Sidhant Sibal (@sidhant) March 15, 2025
Aside from the whole working-Aussies-living-in-tents thing, if you want to know why Australia’s defence appears so lacklustre, this is it. What is the point of fighting for a government that is just going to give our country away to foreigners anyway?
It highlights the importance of Australia’s nationalists taking power, as the only political force capable of inspiring Australians to a monumental effort to secure our existence as a people in our own country, is a political force which genuinely represents Australians to the exclusion of all others.
