The manager of the Chinese ship that was spinning near the cable damage tells HS his understanding of what is happening on the ship now
HS in Ningbo |HS visited the Ningbo Industrial Park in Northeast China and found a skyscraper where the Chinese vessel Yi Peng 3 sends its daily reports. The director agreed to a ten-minute interview about the crew and the ship's journey.

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The office of the management company of the Yi Peng 3 cargo ship is located in Ningbo.
The office of the management company of the Yi Peng 3 cargo ship is located in Ningbo. Photo :  Matilda Jokinen / HS


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Matilda Jokinen HS
22.11. 14:09
Ningbo

The gleaming skyscraper is the Bank of China tower. On its 39th floor, there are modern office spaces with sympathetic dragons adorning the glass doors.

There is a plaque on the wall: Win Enterprise Ship Management (Ningbo) Co., Ltd.

The company is registered as the management company of the Yi Peng 3 cargo ship. It means that the company is partly responsible for the actions of the ship. Now the ship itself is stopped in Kattegat on the border of Denmark's territorial waters and EEZ.

The Yi Peng 3 is a Chinese cargo ship that moved in the vicinity of both broken communication cables in the Baltic Sea at the same time when their faults were discovered. There was a fault in the submarine cables between Finland and Germany on Monday morning after 4 o'clock. The Central Criminal Police has started an investigation into the case.

It's Friday now, and we're in Ningbo, Northeast China, at the management company's office.


The management company's office is modern.
The management company's office is modern. Photo :  Matilda Jokinen / HS

Work is done in the modern open office. We continue to the corridor where we find the manager's room. The man dressed in a gray suit jacket introduces himself as Mr. Tong , but does not want to give his first name.

Tong says that the Win company still receives a daily report from the Yi Peng 3 crew. There has been nothing unusual about them, but "the journey of the entire crew has been quite ordinary". He has only heard about cable crimes on the internet.

“I know the ship is docked there. But we haven't been in touch with the crew," says Tong.

According to Mr. Tong, the crew consists of 22 members, all of whom are Chinese nationals. The captain of the ship is named Zhou Bin . The information provided by Tong matches the documents published by the Russian media

According to the newspaper, captain Lars Bo Nielsen, who was transporting journalists from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, has contacted the Yi Peng 3 ship and asked how long it plans to stand still. The man who answered from the ship had said that he did not know, and added that the reason was not technical problems.

"We are waiting for an order from the company", the ship had replied when the Danes asked why the ship stopped on Tuesday.

Mr. Tong tells us that the crew has not been in contact with parties outside the ship and no one has boarded the ship.

However, Marinetraffic data shows that a Danish pilot boarded the Chinese ship on Tuesday morning. From the incident information of the Chinese vessel, it appeared that later on Tuesday the pilot of another Danish pilot boat also boarded the vessel.

Tong does not explain why the ship has stopped if the crew's daily reports are once normal.

"It's parked there. The reason is as they say online. So they just stand there, wait a little bit and see what happens.”

Earlier, it was reported that at the time of the cable breakage, Yi Peng 3 was on its way from the Russian port of Ust-Luga or Laukaansuu to Port Said in Egypt. According to Tong, the ship requested a cargo of coal from Russia, and its purpose is to return to China, although the exact return port has not been decided so far.

According to MarineTraffic, the cargo would have been fertilizers.

According to the original schedule, the ship should have arrived in China at the end of December. Now the schedule "is of course delayed", says Tong.

“But it's pretty standard. The delay could also happen due to, for example, weather conditions," says Tong.

After less than ten minutes, Tong apologizes and says he doesn't know anything else.

"I'm busy," he says and ends the interview.

Win company is not the owner of Yi Peng 3. The ship is owned by Ningbo Yipeng Shipping Co., LTD.

On Thursday evening, we visited the industrial park in the port city of Ningbo, where the address of the ship's owner is registered.

There is no office, and not really an industrial park either.

The logo of the industrial park is there, but a man who has lived next door for 15 years says that it closed its doors eight or nine years ago.


Next to Teollisuuspuisto's gate stands a house where the ship's owner's company is registered. However, the office was not found.
Next to Teollisuuspuisto's gate stands a house where the ship's owner's company is registered. However, the office was not found. Photo :  Matilda Jokinen / HS

A dilapidated apartment building stands on the site, where a couple of floors are reserved for individual companies. The rest of the premises belong to the army, "Military management zone", it is explained in the corridor. The presence of soldiers in the street scene confirms the observation.

The stairwell of the house is dark after nightfall.

The neighbor says that the companies didn't really want to move to the area from the beginning. According to him, the industrial park was a failed project, and the premises now belong to veterans.

"My guess is that the company just uses the address because it belongs to an industrial park."

The view is justified. It is likely that the actual office premises of Yi Peng 3's owner company are elsewhere.

It is difficult to reach the ship's owner. Although we have contact information, company representatives do not accept contact requests on the contact application WeChat and do not answer the phone.


A neighborhood near the industrial park.
A neighborhood near the industrial park. Photo :  Matilda Jokinen / HS

It's hard to find clues on the spot at the official address. The presence of the armed forces does not increase the cooperative atmosphere.

We walk through dark stairwells, and we finally find one entrepreneur. He says he hasn't heard from the owners of Yi Peng 3.

Soon two soldiers appear in the dark corridor. They want to make sure that no images related to the military are found on our phones.

Obviously, the visit ends here.