Was it an Accident? China’s narrative on pipeline damage in the Baltic Sea has been called into question

China has admitted for the first time that the Chinese-owned cargo ship NewNew Polar Bear was responsible for the damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline in October 2023.

However, European officials may not buy the how explanation.

Finding perspective: The South China Morning Post reported on August 12, Chinese authorities conducted their own internal investigation and shared the results with the Estonian and Finnish governments.

According to the Chinese report seen by some ministries, the incident is said to be an accident resulting from a strong storm, although no details are given on how exactly the pipeline was damaged.

The 77-kilometer pipeline that runs from Estonia under the Baltic Sea and connects Finland to the European gas grid was damaged along with two nearby telecommunications cables on the night of October 7 or the morning of October 8, according to investigators.

Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) conducted an investigation into the incident and concluded that the damage, which severed the pipeline and left a large dragline on the seabed, was caused by a ship’s anchor.

Speaking to local media following the South China Morning Post report, Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur expressed skepticism about the Chinese explanation.

“Personally, I find it very difficult to understand how the captain of a ship could not notice for so long that her anchor had dragged along the seabed,” he said. said on August 13.

Both Estonian and Finnish authorities said the culprit behind the NewNew Polar Bear incident, a Hong Kong-flagged container ship registered to China’s NewNew Shipping Line, was also in the area.

Damage and location of the vessel made international headlines in October and in November, when it was tracked as it sailed back to China through Russian waters after Finnish authorities tried unsuccessfully several times to contact the ship.

What’s next?: While the admission adds a new layer to the story, Estonian and Finnish investigators said the Chinese report did not qualify as official evidence.

Estonia’s prosecutor’s office also told the South China Morning Post that it had not received the document and that they had submitted legal assistance requests to Chinese authorities to gather evidence and interview the crew. Finland’s BNI declined to comment.

These requests for further investigation remain unanswered by Beijing.

Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal also did not see the Chinese report and said that “the practical task remains to repair the damage, and the question remains who will bear the cost.”

Both the Estonian and Finnish investigations are ongoing.

Sari Arho Havren, a Helsinki-based researcher at the Royal United Services Institute who followed the case, told me that it should not be surprising that China admitted its involvement given the amount of evidence, but now “the narrative that this was an accident will be used to deny calls for a deeper investigation.”

Why it matters: Since incident took place, the main question was whether it was an accident or an act of sabotage.

The damage occurred a few months after Finland officially joined NATO and amid the rise concerns by the Western military alliance over attacks on its critical undersea infrastructure, such as internet cables, power cables and pipelines.

The Balticconnector incident also occurred just over a year after the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines bringing gas from Russia to northern Germany damaged by explosions.

Estonian and Finnish authorities have commented carefully on the investigation and how responsive their Chinese counterparts are.

“If China doesn’t comply, it will be very difficult to open it further,” Arho Havren said. “The way this case is handled will set an important precedent one way or another.”

Three more stories from Eurasia

1. China’s space program reaches Central Asia

A new agreement for Kazakhstan to join Chinese-led plans to build and operate a research base on the moon could set the stage for deepening cooperation between the two countries, we reported. Here.

Details: That agreement was signed in July, but its details were exposed during an August 5 press conference in Astana.

Not only will Kazakhstan be the 12th member of the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), a Chinese-led initiative with Russia’s Roskosmos for a lunar base, but Astana and Beijing have also established new exchanges and agreed to explore the commercial use of the other. spaceports.

It’s a significant development that puts Kazakhstan on a path to further integration into China’s booming space industry at a time when Beijing and Washington’s rivalry is also playing out in outer space.

The ILRS and its accompanying coordinating organization are seen as a Chinese-led response to NASA’s Artemis Program, a US-led initiative that aims to send a manned mission to the Moon by 2025, with a continued presence until 2028. As As part of its own diplomatic push for space, Washington got more than 40 countries to sign the Artemis Accords, a set of principles for the exploration and use of outer space.

Beyond the lunar base, Kazakhstan’s deal with China could also have implications for the future space economy.

The Central Asian country has a legacy of history in the Soviet and Russian space programs and could help China in its satellite competition, which will influence the future of Beijing’s Beidou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), which is its answer to GPS American, Russian GLONASS. , or the European Galileo navigation systems.

Widespread adoption of either system has immense commercial value, and China wants BDS to be used for aircraft, car and ship navigation, as well as humanitarian and disaster relief, agricultural improvement, weather forecasting and military applications.

2. Traditional Chinese medicine is coming to Romania

Under the mandate of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) spread and was actively promoted by Beijing abroad.

My colleague Ionut Benea from the Romanian Service of RFE/RL look how practice has become a centerpiece of the programs offered at two of the top four medical universities in the country.

What you need to know: Ionuț’s report focuses on forays into medical schools in Bucharest and Iasi in eastern Romania, where TCM has become part of the curriculum.

Program heads and administrators at both universities have been the target of a push by Chinese officials to promote the style of medicine for years, including paid exchanges, scholarships and activities supported by the Chinese Embassy in Bucharest.

TCM has become part of a broader soft-power push by China. Xi often refers to to the practice as a “national treasure” and has directed significant resources toward TCM research and promotion. In December 2016, China published its first white paper on TCM, which called for “equal status” between TCM and Western medicine, as well as greater investment in TCM research and education.

The document also calls for China to “actively introduce TCM to the rest of the world” through its bilateral relations and presence in multilateral organizations.

Read the full report Here.

3. Repression of Kazakh

Members of Naghyz Atazhurt, an unregistered political party in Kazakhstan that was founded to defend the rights of ethnic Kazakhs in neighboring Xinjiang, say they have recently come under increased pressure from the government, RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service reports. rEPORTS.

What does this mean: Speaking at a press conference on August 7, members of the group said their ranks were facing a steep rise in fines imposed on them.

Bekzat Maqsutkhan, the head of the party, was recently sentenced to 10 days in prison on charges of violating regulations for organizing public events without a permit.

The leaders of Naghyz Atazhurt have been trying to officially register as a political party since May 2022, but their applications have been rejected by the authorities.

The organization was formerly known as Atazhurt Eriktileri and was originally founded as a grassroots organization campaigning for the release of ethnic Kazakhs from internment camps in Xinjiang in western China as they began to fill up with Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other mostly Muslim minorities. 2017 and 2018.

In 2022, a group of leading members announced a plan to become a political party “to contribute to the process of the democratic political system, taking into account the traditions, language and national characteristics of the Kazakh people.”

Over the Supercontinent

IPAC Threats: Romanian deputy Catalin Tenita participated in the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance for China (IPAC) in Taiwan at the end of July.

Tenita, along with several other IPAC members, was contacted by the local embassy threatening strained ties with Beijing in an attempt to dissuade him and other lawmakers from attending the summit.

German Surge: Despite calls from the German government to diversify away from China to less geopolitically risky markets, German direct investment increased in 2024, conformable to central bank data seen by the Financial Times.

The surge is largely from the auto industry and is a sign that companies are ignoring the government’s demands. German investment for the first half of 2024 reached 7.3 billion euros ($8 billion), already more than the 6.5 billion euros for the whole of 2023.

Chip Wars: Huawei prepares to launch new AI chip to challenge Nvidia’s H100 amid US sanctions aimed at curbing its technological advances, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Kursk reaction: Beijing has been relatively muted amid Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

The only comment so far came on August 12, when the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling on Kiev and Moscow to “respect the three principles for de-escalation of the situation, namely no expansion of the battlefield, no escalation of the fighting and no fueling of the flame by either side”.

A thing to watch

Environmental protests are in progress in Serbia because of the government’s plan to allow the British-Australian company Rio Tinto to open a lithium mine in western Serbia.

The Serbian government tried to push through a similar deal in 2021, but backed off after months of widespread protests over environmental and pollution concerns sweeping the country.

As tens of thousands of protesters take to the streets again, it’s worth noting that during those 2021 demonstrations, Serbian law enforcement tested for the first time some of the Chinese-made surveillance equipment it had purchased, so as documented in this document. RFE/RL investigation. Could the current protests be another opportunity to try out more new gear?

Via RFE/RL

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