Sri Lanka says it will not allow any Chinese research vessel to dock at its ports or in EEZ

Sri Lanka has informed India that it will not allow any Chinese research vessel to dock at its ports or operate within its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) for one year. The move comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged President Ranil Wickremesinghe to respect Indian strategic and security concerns. Sri Lanka's decision means that the Chinese research vessel Xiang Yang Hong 3 will not be granted clearance to conduct deep water exploration in the south Indian Ocean.

Updated on: Dec 31, 2023, 22:26:19 IST

By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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Sri Lanka has informed India that it will not allow any Chinese research vessel to dock at its ports or operate within its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) for a period of one year, people aware of the matter said on Sunday.

The move comes close on the heels of Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging President Ranil Wickremesinghe to respect Indian strategic and security concerns during their meeting on July 21, 2023.

The declared moratorium was conveyed to India through apex diplomatic channels last week, the people cited above added.

This means that Chinese scientific research vessel Xiang Yang Hong 3, which was scheduled to conduct “deep water exploration” in the south Indian Ocean from January 5, 2024 to late May, will not be granted a clearance by Sri Lankan authorities. China has also asked the current pro-Beijing Mohammed Muizzu regime in Maldives to let the 4,600-tonne Xiamen-based vessel conduct a survey off the coast of Male.

The Wickremesinghe government notified the one-year moratorium last week after India and the US red-flagged Colombo entertaining Chinese scientific research vessels and ballistic missile trackers in the Indian Ocean and providing them logistical support, the people said. India had raised objections to Chinese research vessel Shi Yan 6 conducting a joint maritime survey with the Sri Lankan maritime agency in October-November, but Colombo allowed the vessel to dock at its seaport after Wickremesinghe visited Beijing for the 10the anniversary of Belt Road Initiative (BRI) on October 17-18. The research vessel reached Colombo on October 25, and crossed the Malacca Straits on December 2. The objections to both Shi Yan 6, which was expected to be back in Sri Lanka around March, and Xiang Yang Hong 3, were conveyed to Wickremesinghe by top Indian diplomatic interlocutors, the people added.

In the past, Chinese research ships, ballistic missile trackers and hydrographic vessels have entered the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and conducted deep surveys of the 90-degree ridge south of the Andamans and Nicobar Islands. For example, Deng Jiaxian, a Shupang-class hydrographic vessel, was deployed in IOR from August 10-24. The ship re-entered IOR through the Sunda Straits on August 28 and exited through the Lombok/Ombai Wetar Straits in early September 2023. On September 11, the same vessel was seen surveying the Philippines Sea.

This year, at least 25 Chinese ships including PLA warships, submarines, ballistic missile trackers and research vessels operated in the IOR, much to the chagrin of India and the US. Since 2019, a total of 48 Chinese scientific research vessels have been deployed in IOR. Their generic area of activity has been near the east and west coastlines of India, and in the deep Indian Ocean.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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