China’s Underwater Ambitions Built on U.S. Technology | Kharon The Kharon Brief

China’s Underwater Ambitions Built on U.S. Technology

Underwater gliders have dual-use applications and operate in the South China Sea

Researchers pose in front of the “Sea Whale,” an underwater unmanned vehicle, after it successfully completed a marine test. (Source: Shenyang Institute of Automation)

By Priscilla Kim and Samuel Rubenfeld

May 12, 2021


The recent guilty plea in U.S. court by a Chinese man for illegal exports related to undersea technology underlines Beijing’s reliance on U.S. products and components for its effort to build a fleet of underwater unmanned vehicles (UUV) with potential military uses, according to a Kharon investigation.

Qin Shuren, who lived in a suburb of Boston, pleaded guilty late last month to a number of charges related to his export of 60 hydrophones, devices used to detect and monitor sound underwater, prosecutors said. The hydrophones were sent from the U.S. to Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU), a Chinese military research institution, according to prosecutors. He is scheduled to be sentenced in September. Qin did not obtain the licenses required to make the hydrophone exports, and he committed money laundering by transferring funds from bank accounts in China to the U.S. to facilitate the export scheme, prosecutors said. 

Court documents filed in Qin’s case, along with records reviewed by Kharon, paint a significantly broader picture of Beijing’s interest in, and use of, U.S. and Western underwater technology. 

“China has an insatiable appetite for our country’s most sensitive products and technologies -- particularly those with military applications,” said Nathaniel R. Mendell, acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, in a statement following Qin’s guilty plea. 

Qin and his China-based company, LinkOcean Technologies Ltd., had received taskings and orders from the Chinese military, and its associated entities, to obtain components with applications in underwater and marine technologies, according to a superseding indictment in the case filed in 2018. Between 2015 and 2018 alone, he supplied goods worth about USD 8 million to entities controlled by the Chinese government, according to the filing.

China’s Underwater Great Wall 

U.S. underwater technology, including UUV components, reaches Chinese research institutions and other military-linked entities in additional ways aside from sales facilitated by businessmen like Qin, including third party procurement intermediaries, Kharon found.

In June 2020, the U.S. expanded its restrictions against exports of goods for military end use, or military end users (MEU), to China. Six months later, the U.S. Commerce Department provided a list of Chinese MEUs, and cautioned that the names provided weren’t exhaustive. 

China “will remain the top threat to U.S. technological competitiveness,” as the government in Beijing uses a “variety of tools, from public investment to espionage and theft,” to advance its capabilities, according to a recent threat assessment produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). In the South China Sea, Beijing will continue to intimidate rivals and “will use growing numbers of air, naval and maritime law enforcement platforms” to signal its control over the contested area, the ODNI assessment said. 

One of these platforms, which has been called the “Underwater Great Wall,” includes a network of buoys, satellites, UUVs and other submersibles conducting underwater monitoring. The effort has dual-use capabilities, including the ability to “detect any threat at any given point of time,” but can also provide warnings for natural disasters, such as typhoons, earthquakes and tsunamis, according to Chinese and English media reporting, and a report by the National Maritime Foundation, an India-based think tank. 

NWPU, which received Qin’s hydrophone exports, has been involved in the development of UUVs and other unmanned vehicles, and was added in 2001 to a U.S. Commerce Department export restrictions list. In a December 2020 journal article, researchers from NWPU and the People's Liberation Army Naval Research Academy proposed using UUVs such as underwater gliders to perform tasks related to protecting maritime rights, including in contested areas such as the South China Sea.

Haiyi Glides to Indonesia

UUVs apparently used in the Underwater Great Wall effort also contain U.S. technology, Kharon found. In one case, a UUV discovered by an Indonesian fisherman late last year that authorities said appeared to be a Chinese-made device also contains Western-origin components. 

The discovery of the UUV in the Sunda Strait, between the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra, was significant because it suggests that China has the ability to send submarines undetected into foreign waters, experts told the South China Morning Post at the time.

The UUV bore the label “Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences,” and is known as the Haiyi, or “Sea Wing,” underwater glider. The Haiyi was designed by the Shenyang Institute of Automation (SIA) and has been primarily used for scientific missions, but the glider also possesses potential military applications, according to testimony before a June 2019 hearing of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

Yu Haibin (right), director of the Shenyang Institute of Automation, shows the Haiyi underwater glider to top municipal Chinese Communist Party officials. (Source: Shenyang Institute of Automation)

The SIA developed the first prototype of the Haiyi glider in 2005. Since November 2016, the Haiyi project has been led by Tianjin Deepinfar Ocean Science & Technology Co., according to its website. A U.S. ban on exports of underwater gliders prompted the Chinese government to pump resources into domestic production, Yu Jiancheng, a professor at the SIA who led the Haiyi project, said in a September 2016 interview with the South China Morning Post. The U.S. restricts exports to China of certain underwater sensors and unmanned vehicles. 

The Haiyi glider contains a profiling instrument and a chlorophyll turbidity sensor from U.S.-based manufacturers, and a dissolved oxygen sensor produced by a Norwegian subsidiary of a U.S. company, according to its specifications. 

In 2018, the SIA sought to purchase RMB 1.8 million worth of U.S.-made instruments matching those used in the Haiyi glider. The seller, China-based Laurel Marine Instruments, is an official sales representative of the U.S. manufacturer and is ultimately owned by a longtime supplier of the Chinese Navy, records show.

Twelve Haiyi gliders were deployed between December 2019 and March 2020 in the East Indian Ocean as part of the Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources’ Joint Advanced Marine and Ecological Studies (JAMES) expedition, according to a March 2020 Chinese Academy of the Sciences article. (The Second Institute was added late last year to the MEU List.) The gliders, equipped with a variety of biological, hydrological and chemical sensors, performed a cooperative survey, obtaining data on temperature, salinity, turbidity, and oxygen content, the March 2020 Chinese Academy of Sciences article said. 

In March, the SIA announced it had successfully tested a miniature version of the Haiyi glider, saying the smaller device brings a number of advantages, including its low cost and light weight. China is also developing a series of extra-large UUVs, which can be used in submarine warfare, or as a countermeasure against similar weapons, Lin Yang, director of the Marine Information Technology Equipment Center at the SIA, told the South China Morning Post in 2018.

Haiyan Patrols the South China Sea

Another UUV, called the Haiyan, or the “Petrel II” in English, is also part of China’s underwater armada. The Haiyan is able to monitor marine environmental features such as sea depth, density and flow velocity, and has “contributed greatly to the marine science and marine military fields,” according to Yu Geng, who helped design and develop the glider. 

The Haiyan glider was jointly developed by China-based SeaHorizon Solutions Group Limited, and the Joint Laboratory for Ocean Observation and Detection, according to SeaHorizon Solutions’ website. 

Yu, the majority owner of SeaHorizon Solutions, founded the company after realizing that China’s naval equipment was far behind compared to other countries, according to an article published in September 2020 in Chinese media. SeaHorizon Solutions has participated in procurement activities involving U.S.-made software for the Chinese military, records show.

The Haiyan-L, a model of the Petrel II UUV made by SeaHorizon Solutions, uses sensor technology from U.S. companies, according to a September 2020 contract. Researchers from the South China Sea Survey Technology Center of the State Oceanic Administration, which had bought the Haiyan-L, published a paper in 2017 on how to improve the visual control systems used in underwater acoustic remote monitoring equipment that can be used for surveilling marine vessels.

The Haiyan-X underwater glider passed marine tests in 2018. (Source: Tianjin University)

The Haiyan-X, another Haiyan model, was developed by Tianjin University and the Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao) (QNLM). It has been active in the South China Sea to observe and collect information about the marine environment, a July 2020 Xinhua report said.

The Haiyan collected data on temperature and salinity, turbulence and dissolved oxygen for QNLM, which operates one of the world’s largest ocean observation systems in the South China Sea. 

The observation network has deployed more than 200 sets of long-term deep-sea observation buoys that conduct long-term, continuous observation of ocean currents and other marine processes. Components from two U.S. companies are part of the buoy system, according to QNLM’s website.

QNLM has a governing body consisting of 16 entities, including state-owned defense conglomerates, that acts as the laboratory’s decision-making body. It conducts research with dual civilian and military uses, and it operates joint labs, including one established with the Chinese Navy Submarine Academy, which, according to court records, was a “VIP” customer of Qin’s company, LinkOcean Technologies.

Share this story