In November 1998, a 10,000-ton freighter quietly disappeared in the South China Sea. Aboard were 23 Chinese crew members, who, to the very end, did not know that they had boarded not an ordinary merchant shipping route, but the endpoint of a carefully planned maritime massacre. The “Chang Sheng” case was later classified as the largest maritime robbery and homicide case since the founding of New China. The cruelty of the case and the tortuous process of its investigation make it an unavoidable page in the history of China’s fight against maritime crime.

I. The Disappeared “Chang Sheng”

The “Chang Sheng” was a Panamanian-flagged bulk carrier with a total deadweight of 16,785 tons and an overall length of 146 meters. It belonged to Hong Kong Huibo Shipping Company, affiliated with Guangzhou Ocean Shipping Company. On November 13, 1998, it set sail from the Baosteel wharf in Shanghai, carrying coal slag bound for Malaysia. Aboard were 23 Chinese expatriate crew members.

Under normal circumstances, it should have arrived at its destination port within a few days. But the “Chang Sheng” did not appear at any port. It lost all contact in the waters near 22 degrees 20 minutes north latitude and … Read More