OSINT Investigation: Alleged Sinking of Submarine in Wuhan

On 26 Sep 24, a report by the Wall Street Journal citing an unnamed US defense official alleged that a Zhou-class nuclear powered submarine under construction sunk in a shipyard in Wuhan in late-May to early-June 2024. The report said that indications that the vessel had sunk was that there were several cranes over where the vessel was docked. Not much on other details such as where exactly this shipyard might be. So I thought this would definitely be a story in which the gaps can be filled in by open source. So here we go….

Shipyard In Wuhan

My first thought when I saw this detail in the report was that it seemed to be a very odd location to build a sea-going vessel. Wuhan is situated in the center of China – deep inland (see below). According to ports.comthe city’s port is 607 nautical miles away from the Shanghai Port. New ships will have to traverse the Yangtze River (长江) to exit into the Yellow Sea (黄海).

I used ChatGPT to speed up my research and found a really useful article titled, “China’s Submarine Industrial Base: State-Led Innovation with Chinese Characteristics” by the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI). According to the article, there is a shipyard in Wuhan called “Wuchang Shipyard” which is operated by Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group Co. Ltd. (武昌船舶重工集团有限公司). The article mentioned that the shipyard specializes in building conventionally powered submarines. There is a 719th Research Institute (七一九所) or the Wuhan Second Ship Design Research Institute (武汉第二船舶设计研究所) which designs nuclear-powered submarines but the article mentioned that its designs are implemented instead by the Bohai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry Co.,Ltd. (渤海船舶重工有限责任公司).

So if the Wall Street Journal’s report on the sunken submarine being nuclear-powered was accurate, it would mean that there is a change in Wuchang Shipyard’s scope to include nuclear-powered submarine. It is notable that Wuchang is located far more inland than Bohai, which although shielded by the Liaodong Peninsula (辽东半岛) and Shandong Peninsula (山东半岛), is located along the coast of Bohai Sea (see map below).

It might be possible that producing nuclear-powered submarines in Wuchang Shipyard serves to diversify production capabilities to a more secure location that would be relatively safe from conventional military attacks.

Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group Co. Ltd.

The company is a regional subsidiary of the state-owned China State Shipbuilding Company (中国船舶集团有限公司) or CSSC. However, Wuchang Shipbuilding is managed by the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation(中国船舶重工集团公司) or CSIC, a direct subsidiary of CSSC.

View of the entrance to Wuchang Shipyard (Baidu Maps street view)

In 2019, CSSC had merged with CSIC (see link) to form what was billed as the world’s largest shipbuilding company. The merger was in fact a re-merger as CSIC was previously spun off in 1999 as a separate company with CSIC controlling ship building assets in the north and CSSC controlling assets in the south. After the re-merger, it appears that CSIC and CSSC retained their separate corporate structures and with CSSC now being a parent company to two subsidiaries: China CSSC Holdings and CSIC. CSIC retained a separate corporate branding as well (see below CSIC website screenshot).

In September 2024, there were reports that there would be a re-organization of China CSSC Holdings and CSIC which would see the former taking over the latter via a share swap so that there would no longer be two separate subsidiaries under CSSC.

In a report by IISS in September 2020, the following was assessed to be the reasons for the re-merger:

…was aimed at further restructuring in order to increase the competitiveness of the group’s military and civilian shipbuilding and repair activities. More importantly, as a result of the merger, CSSC now oversees all of the R&D institutes and shipyards formerly overseen by the separate CSSC and CSIS enterprises.

…also a response to concerns over longstanding corruption within CSIC.

So we know that CSIC had a track record of mismanagement which may be a possible factor to consider if indeed a submarine had sunken at the Wuchang shipyard. According to 2019 data cited in the IISS report, CSIC had defense industry-related revenue of US$11.3 billion. In June 2024, it was reported that former defense minister Li Shangfu (李尚福) had been under investigation for corruption related to military procurement. Corruption in military procurement thus appeared to continue being a serious problem in China and CSIC is possibly still a part of this phenomenon given its high defense-related revenue.

With that I have come to the end of this article. As usual, please leave me with any comments below. Thanks for reading.

OSINT Investigation: Alleged Sinking of Submarine in Wuhan was originally published in OSINT Team on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.