A NUMBER of security experts have raised suspicions over a Chinese ship tasked with searching for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, saying they’re more likely to be spying on Australian military activity.

The ship in question — the Dong Hai Jiu 101 — is a search and rescue vessel which was built in 2012, which currently sails under the flag of China.

According to the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC), the government organisation tasked with keeping the public informed about the MH370 investigation’s progress, the vessel has been available for search operations since February 25.

In April this year, the Chinese sent the Dong Hai Jiu 101 to join the Fugro Equator and the Fugro Discovery in the hunt for the missing Boeing 777.

When its search operation commenced, Federal Transport Minister Darren Chester released a statement saying: “On behalf of the Australian government, I thanked the Chinese government for its contribution and the captain and crew for their efforts in the search for MH370.”

But some experts have said it’s likely the Chinese have used it more as an opportunity to gain valuable intelligence about Australia’s naval operations, telling The Australian it would be monitoring the military activities of Australia and its allies.

“From my past intelligence experience I would be surprised if a vessel like the Dong Hai Jiu 101 did not have an intelligence collection role,” said Clive Williams, a former Australian Army officer who was Director of Security Intelligence.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings said that, while the vessel isn’t built for gathering intelligence, it would note activity in and out of Fremantle and HMAS Stirling “as a matter of routine”.

Meanwhile, Greg Barton from Deakin University said the Dong Hai Jiu 101 would likely be spying “as a matter of course”.

“Apart from actual intel, it would also represent an opportunity to gauge their signals intelligence capacity in terms of working out what they can pick up at that sort of distance, such as working out how well their hydrophone instrumentation can track submarine movements,” he said.

But Asia-Pacific security expert Jingdong Yuan, an Associate Professor at the Centre For International Security Studies, told news.com.au he was surprised by these claims, saying China’s role in the MH370 search operation is genuine.

“I would think the Chinese government would have a strong incentive and indeed must feel obliged to make great efforts and contribution to the search activities, given that 154 of the more than 200 passengers were Chinese,” he said.

He rejected claims China could be using the opportunity to spy on Australia’s military forces.

“If this logic stands, then China should not be invited to any bilateral or multilateral (RIMPAC) exercises because through these exercises the Chinese military will pick up a lot, intelligence and operational information.”

He said he believed the Dong Hai Jiu 101 would be keen to learn more about the search technology specifically related to the MH370 operation, but drew the line at secret unrelated military matters.

“I would agree that the Chinese ship and the crew would be interested in learning about the deep ocean search technology, approaches, and so forth, as China becomes increasingly involved in such search and rescue activities,” he said.

“The fact that the Chinese ship is not that active and stays at port most of the time could be revelation of the limitation — and hence risk-averse decisions by the captain or even higher up in the command chain — that the primary objectives would minimise exposing its limitation while trying to learn as much as possible about how others are doing.”

Ultimately, he said that while the Chinese may certainly have the motives to gather vital information, their practical ability to do so was highly questionable.

“Overall, I would agree that the Chinese ship would have incentives — and it is logic to assume that they do — but the extent to which they can gain access to and obtain valuable military intelligence would be quite suspect,” he said.

“I am sure the Australian intelligence and the military would be aware of the risks and have made every effort that it will not happen, or at least well below the risk threshold.”

A spokesman for the JACC told news.com.au there is no evidence of the Dong Hai Jiu 101 spying on Australia’s military, saying “suggestions the vessel is engaged in anything other than its publicly stated purpose are purely speculative”.