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Taiwan has asked South Korea for help in investigating a Chinese vessel suspected of cutting a submarine cable off its north coast on Friday.
Taiwanese telecommunications operator Chunghwa Telecom and the Taiwan Coast Guard said on Saturday that the cargo ship Shunxing39 is believed to have damaged a telecommunications cable – near the port of Keelung on Taiwan's northern coast – on the morning of January 3.
This follows incidents where Chinese ships were spotted when laying fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea. they were cut off last November with gas pipe and cable they are damaged there in October 2023.
The latest incident highlights the vulnerability of critical coastal communications and energy infrastructure and the difficulty in prosecuting damage.
While the ship was sailing under the flag of Cameroon, Taiwanese officials said it belonged to Jie Yang Trading Limited. The only registered director of the Hong Kong company is Guo Wenjie, a Chinese national.
Chunghwa Telecom said data connections were quickly restored by restoring data to other submarine cables.
But Taipei worries that China could covertly cut Taiwan's communications links in any possible attempt to seize the country. Beijing claims sovereignty over the island and has threatened to seize it by force if necessary.
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Chunghwa Telecom and Taiwanese government officials told the Financial Times that the damaged cable is part of the Trans-Pacific Express Cable System. The undersea cable that connects Taiwan to the US west coast is owned by an international consortium. Along with Chunghwa, it includes US operator AT&T, Japan's NTT, Korea Telecom and Chinese operators China Telecom and China Unicom.
“Since we have not been able to question the captain, we have asked the South Korean authorities to assist in the investigation at the next port of call,” said a Taiwan Coast Guard official. Taiwan's national security official said the ship would arrive in Pusan in the next few days.
Taiwan's coast guard and other government officials said tracking data from the automatic identification system's signal and satellite data showed that the Shunxing39 had pulled an anchor at the point where the cable broke.
While the coast guard vessel carried out an external inspection of the vessel and established radio contact with the captain, its officers were unable to board it due to bad weather, and could not order its detention for further investigation under international law, as it had plenty of time. that happened later, officials said.
A senior Taiwanese security official said: “This is another worrying case of the destruction of submarine cables. “The vessels involved in these incidents are usually run-of-the-mill vessels with little business above board. He is also in a very bad shape. It's the same with ships that are part of Russia's 'shadow forces',” he added.
According to vessel tracking data seen by the FT, the Shunxing39 had been in waters off the coast of Taiwan since at least December 8. The pattern suggested that the cable damage was not an “innocent” accident, the official said.
Chinese merchant or fishing vessels have occasionally participated in Beijing's large-scale exercises near Taiwan. Taipei is concerned that such “greyzone” operations, which are below the threshold of war, will make it difficult to defend against an attack that could eventually escalate into a direct attack.
Additional reporting by Chan Ho-him and Cheng Leng in Hong Kong