According to a report on January 17 by Li Live, a short video account of China’s Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation, Jiangsu held the “Special Commendation and Awards Conference for Coastal National Security and People’s Defense Lines” to recognize and reward 11 fishermen and five related personnel who salvaged and turned over suspicious underwater steganography devices in China’s territorial waters.
The report said that since 2020, Jiangsu fishermen have found 10 suspicious devices made in other countries with special functions such as underwater investigation, identification and secret theft, which posed a threat to national security.
Previously, in April 2021, China’s CCTV news client had reported that a fisherman and crew in Yancheng, Jiangsu province, had salvaged a bulky black object while fishing offshore and subsequently reported them to local fisheries and state security authorities, and handed over the captured device to a state research institute.
Chinese hydroacoustic engineering expert Tang Jiansheng then studied and judged that the device salvaged by the fishermen was a wave glider, which was judged to be a secret steganography device placed by an overseas country in Chinese waters.
According to the report, a police officer from the National Security Bureau of Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province said that these devices placed in Chinese waters by foreign countries can collect data on ocean currents, hydrology, temperature, humidity, salinity, pollutants and so on, the data are all sensitive state secrets, and these acts are espionage theft. Once these data are illegally collected or stolen from abroad, it will have an impact on the activities of Chinese warships and submarines, the launch of underwater missiles, the detection of anti-submarine sonar communications, the detection of oil and gas fields and construction activities, posing a serious threat to China’s homeland security, military security and deep-sea security.
The report pointed out that in recent years, China’s national security has faced a more serious and complex situation at home and abroad, and the task of maintaining national security has become more arduous, of which maritime security prevention is an indispensable component. With the international situation becoming increasingly complex and volatile, spying and stealing activities against China’s coastal areas are commonplace.