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Taiwan has asked South Korea for help in investigating a Chinese-owned ship suspected of cutting an undersea cable off its northern coast on Friday.
Taiwan’s telecommunications operator Chunghwa Telecom and the Taiwan Coast Guard said on Saturday that the cargo ship Shunxing39 was believed to have damaged a communications cable – near the port of Keelung on Taiwan’s northern coast – on the morning of January 3.
It follows incidents where Chinese ships have come under scrutiny when fiber optic cables are in the Baltic Sea were interrupted last November and gas pipeline and cable were damaged there in October 2023.
The latest event highlights the vulnerability of key offshore communications and energy infrastructure and the difficulties in prosecuting sabotage.
While the ship flies a Cameroonian flag, Taiwanese officials said it is owned by Jie Yang Trading Limited. The sole director of the company registered in Hong Kong is Guo Wenjie, a citizen of mainland China.
Chunghwa Telecom said data connections were immediately established by rerouting data to other international undersea cables.
But Taipei is concerned that China could secretly cut off Taiwan’s external communications links in any potential attempt to annex the country. Beijing claims sovereignty over the island and has threatened to take 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 undersea internet cable connecting Taiwan to the US West Coast is owned by an international consortium. In addition to 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 South Korean authorities to assist in the investigation at the ship’s next port of destination,” said a Taiwan Coast Guard official. A Taiwanese national security official said the ship should arrive in Pusan ​​within the next few days.
Taiwan’s coast guard and other government officials said tracking data from the ship’s automatic identification system signal and satellite data showed the Shunxing39 had pulled its anchor where the cable broke.
While the Coast Guard vessel conducted an external inspection of the vessel and established radio contact with the captain, its officers were unable to board the vessel due to bad weather, and could not order its seizure for further investigation under international law because too much time had passed since the incident, officials said.
“This is another case of a very worrying global trend of sabotage against submarine cables,” said a senior Taiwanese national security official. “The ships involved in these incidents tend to be dilapidated ships that have little outstanding work to do. This one is also in very bad shape. It is similar to the ships that are part of the Russian ‘shadow fleet'”, he added.
According to ship tracking data seen by the FT, the Shunxing39 has been crossing waters off Taiwan’s northern coast since at least December 8. The sample suggested the cable damage was not an “innocent accident,” the official said.
Chinese merchant or fishing vessels have occasionally taken part in some of the large-scale military exercises that Beijing regularly holds near Taiwan. Taipei is concerned that such “grey zone” operations, below the threshold of war, will make it difficult to defend against aggression that could eventually escalate to direct attack.
Additional reporting by Chan Ho-him and Cheng Leng in Hong Kong
