It was a "chinese" vessel in the sense of registration. It wasn't operating at the behest of the PRC government. Nor, obviously, would one expect literal espi

It was a "chinese" vessel in the sense of registration. It wasn't operating at the behest of the PRC government. Nor, obviously, would one expect literal espionage to be carried out only by identifiable government vessels of the nation doing the operation. The really-quite-soundly-grounded consensus is that Russian spies rented this boat. But yes, that's not proven.