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Stephen Chen

A hi-tech oceanic research vessel was launched in Wuhan, heralding a push into deep-sea areas of the world's oceans.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences announced the completion of the 100-metre-long Ke Xue  (Science) on its website yesterday. 
Costing more than 500 million yuan (HK$610 million), it features state of the art design and cutting-edge equipment.
Its maiden cruise is scheduled for the western Pacific in June, where it will explore deep-sea areas.
Professor Wang Fan, a researcher with the academy's Institute of Oceanology in Qingdao , Shandong, and a member of the design team, said yesterday that when they drew up the blueprint they envisioned Ke Xue as being one of the three most advanced research vessels in the world.
'Ke Xue is modelled on the RRS James Cook of Britain and the G.O. Sars of Norway, undisputedly the best research vessels ever built,' he said. 'It is built to be at least as good as them.
'The first few missions will be limited to the western Pacific. But soon, our cruises will go global to more distant areas such as the Indian Ocean and Atlantic.
'With the best multibeam echo sounder and Doppler scanners on board, we can see deep, really deep, into the ocean.'
As the world's biggest factory and fastest growing major economy, China has grown increasingly hungry for oil and minerals. 
The central government, driven by depletion of domestic land-based resources, has encouraged offshore projects with generous funding in recent years.
A submersible, the Jiaolong (Sea Dragon), descended to a depth of 5,000 metres in the northeastern Pacific in July following an earlier descent to 3,700 metres in the South China Sea.
China is involved in territorial disputes with several countries, including Vietnam and the Philippines, in the South China Sea.
In August, China won a 15-year licence to explore for polymetallic sulphide deposits in a 10,000 square kilometre area of seabed in the Indian Ocean. The deposits are believed to contain large quantities of metals such as gold, silver, lead, zinc and copper.
Professor Chu Fengyou, a researcher with the State Oceanic Administration's Second Institute of Oceanography and a veteran of Chinese explorations, said that despite the cutting-edge technology of the Ke Xue, China was still alarmingly far behind countries such as Japan and the United States in terms of the hardware needed in the fight for deep-sea resources.
'Ke Xue is a general purpose research vessel. It is an impressive piece of hardware that will give China an edge in fundamental research but it is not so useful in large-scale resource exploration such as deep-sea drilling,' he said.
'In fact, we don't have a large-scale resource exploration vessel, whereas countries such as Japan have already built up a gigantic fleet. I don't think we can compete with them unless the government invests much more money and builds more ships.'
Capable of running for two months non-stop and with a top speed of 15 knots, the diesel-electric turbines of the Ke Xue were exceptionally quiet and would cause minimum disturbance to the scientific equipment on board, Wang said.
All the equipment was dedicated to scientific research and had no military applications, he said.
The vessel would also be used by scientists from other countries.
80
The number of scientists that will be able to work in state of the art laboratories on the 4,864-tonne Ke Xue oceanic research vessel



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