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Taiwan on Friday asked South Korea to investigate a Chinese-owned ship suspected of cutting a submarine cable off its northern coast.
Taiwan’s telecom operator Chunghua Telecom and the Taiwan Coast Guard said on Saturday that the cargo ship Shunxing39 is believed to have damaged a communication cable – near the port of Keelung on Taiwan’s northern coast – on the morning of January 3.
It follows the incidents of Chinese ships inspecting fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea. They are cut Last November and gas pipe and cable They are hurt There in October 2023.
A recent incident illustrates the difficulty of prosecuting the vulnerability and sabotage of critical coastal communications and energy infrastructure.
Taiwanese authorities said the ship was owned by Ji Yang Trading Limited, while sailing under the Cameroonian flag. The Hong Kong-registered company’s sole listed director is Guo Wenji, a native Chinese.
According to Chungwa Telecom, data connections were immediately restored by transferring data to other international submarine cables.
But Taipei fears China could secretly cut off Taiwan’s foreign relations in an attempt to annex the country. Beijing claims sovereignty over the island and has threatened to seize it by force if necessary.
China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Chunghwa Telecom and Taiwan government officials told the Financial Times that the damaged cable was part of the Trans-Pacific Express cable system. The submarine internet cable that connects Taiwan to the US West Coast is owned by an international consortium. Chungwa also 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 South Korean authorities to assist us in the investigation at the ship’s next port of call,” a Taiwan Coast Guard official said. Taiwan’s national security official said the ship is due to arrive in Pusan ​​in the next few days.
Taiwan’s coast guard and other government officials said tracking signals from the ship’s automatic identification system and satellite data showed the Shunxing 39 had pulled anchor at the site of the cable break.
Although a coast guard vessel conducted an external inspection of the ship and radioed the captain, officials were unable to board it due to bad weather, and could not order further investigations under international law. He passed away after the incident, officials said.
“This is another very serious trend in the sabotage of international submarine cables,” said a senior Taiwanese national security official. “The vessels involved in these incidents are usually damaged vessels with little business above board. This is in a very bad condition. It is similar to the vessels that are part of the Russian ‘shadow fleet’,” he added.
According to ship tracking data seen by the FT, the Shunxing39 had been crossing waters close to Taiwan’s northern coast since at least December 8. The pattern suggests the cable damage was not a “pure accident,” the official said.
Chinese commercial or fishing vessels have occasionally participated in some of the larger military exercises that Beijing regularly conducts in Taiwan. Taipei fears that “greyzone” operations below the war threshold will make it difficult to defend against attacks that could later escalate to direct attacks.
Additional reporting by Chan Ho-him and Cheng Leng in Hong Kong
