Taiwan is investigating whether a Chinese-linked ship was responsible for damaging one of the submarine cables connecting Taiwan to the internet, a reminder of how vulnerable Taiwan's critical infrastructure is to China.
The incident took place at a time of growing concern in Europe acts of apparent subversionincluding cables routed to such submarine communication cables. Two fiber-optic cables were laid under the Baltic Sea cut off in NovemberSweden urged officials in Finland and Lithuania to detain a Chinese-flagged merchant ship in the area for weeks over its possible involvement.
In Taiwan, communications were quickly replaced after the damage was discovered and there were no major outages. Chunghwa Telecom, the island's main telecommunications provider, received a notice Friday morning that the cable, known as the Trans-Pacific Express Cable, had been damaged. That cable also connects to South Korea, Japan, China and the United States.
Later that afternoon, Taiwan's Coast Guard intercepted a cargo ship near the northern city of Keelung in an area where half a dozen cables ran aground. The Taiwan Coast Guard Administration said the vessel was owned by a Hong Kong company and had a crew of seven Chinese nationals.
The damaged cable is one of more than a dozen that help keep Taiwan online. These fragile cables are vulnerable to breakage by anchors dragged along the seabed by multiple ships in the tight waters around Taiwan.
Analysts and officials say that while it is difficult to prove whether the damage to the cables was intentional, such a move fits China's pattern of intimidation and psychological warfare aimed at weakening Taiwan's defenses.
Taiwan said the seized cargo ship was registered under the flags of both Cameroon and Tanzania. “The possibility of a Chinese-flagged vessel encroaching on the gray zone cannot be ruled out,” the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement on Monday.
According to Yisuo Tzeng, a researcher at the National Defense and Security Research Institute, which is funded by Taiwan's defense ministry, such harassment, which worries Taiwanese forces but ends open confrontation, has a desensitizing effect over time. Mr. Tzeng said this puts Taiwan at risk of being caught off guard in the event of a real conflict.
Taiwan's waters and airspace are invaded daily by the People's Liberation Army. Last month, China sent about 90 naval and coast guard ships to the waters of the region. the largest such operation in almost three decades.
China has also placed militarized fishing vessels and his coast guard fleet It has increased the threat in disputes around the South China Sea region and stepped up patrols a few miles off the coast of Taiwan's outer islands. dangerous confrontations.
Gregory Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said such harassment “has been a defining indicator of China's coercion toward Taiwan for decades, but it has really increased in the last few years.”
And in situations like this, and with recent damage to cables under the Baltic Sea, it's difficult to verify the authorities' response when the ship's true identity is uncertain.
“Every time an illegal sand dredger, or in this case, a ship registered under a flag of convenience with Chinese ties, damages a submarine cable, do you deploy a Coast Guard vessel?” asked Mr. Pauling.
Ship tracking data and ship logs analyzed by The Times suggest the vessel may have broadcast its position under a false name.
Taiwan said the ship was using two sets of Automatic Identification System equipment used to broadcast the ship's position. The vessel Shun Xing 39 was reporting AIS positions in waters off the northeast coast of Taiwan when Taiwan reported the cable damage on January 3.
About nine hours later, at around 16:51 local time, Shun Xing 39 stopped transmitting location data. This was shortly after the Taiwanese Coast Guard had located the vessel and requested that it return to waters outside the port of Keelung for investigation.
A minute later and 50 feet away, a vessel named the Xing Shun 39, which had not reported a position since late December, began broadcasting a signal, according to William Conroy, a marine analyst with Semaphore Maritime Solutions in Wildwood, Mo. which analyzes AIS data on the ship tracking platform Starboard.
In the vessel tracking database, both Xing Shun 39 and Shun Xing 39 identify themselves as cargo vessels with Class A AIS transponders. Typically, a transponder-equipped cargo ship of this class will be large enough to require registration with the International Maritime Organization and obtain a unique identification number, known as an IMO number. Xing Shun 39 has an IMO number, but Shun Xing 39 does not appear in the IMO database. This, according to Mr. Conroy, is the true identity of the ship “Xing Shun 39” and the “Shun Xing 39” is a fake.
The Taiwan Coast Guard identified the vessel as the Shun Xing 39 and said the vessel was using two AIS systems.
Hong Kong-based Jie Yang Trading Ltd took over as owner of the Xing Shun 39 in April 2024, ship and corporate records show.
The Taiwan Coast Guard said the waves were too big to board the cargo ship for further investigation. According to the administration, Taiwan is seeking help from South Korea because the cargo ship's crew said it was headed for that country.
In 2023, the remote Matsu Islands, within sight of China's coast, endured an unpatched internet months after two underwater internet cables broke. These fiber optic cables, which connect Taiwan to the Internet, have suffered about 30 such outages between 2017 and 2023.
The frequent outages are a reminder that Taiwan's communications infrastructure must be able to withstand a crisis.
To ensure Taiwan remains online if the cables fail, the government is looking for a backup, including building a network of low-orbit satellites that can transmit internet from space to Earth. Most notably, officials in Taiwan are racing to build their own system Without the presence of Elon MuskRocket company SpaceX dominates the satellite internet industry, but deep business ties in China have left them wary.