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Taiwan has asked South Korea for help in investigating a Chinese ship suspected of cutting an undersea cable off Taiwan’s northern coast on Friday.
The cargo ship Shun Hing 39 is believed to have caused damage to a communications cable near the port of Keelung on Taiwan’s north coast on the morning of January 3, Taiwanese telecommunications company Chunghwa Telecom and the Taiwan Coast Guard said on Saturday.
This comes after incidents such as the cutting of fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea last November and damage to natural gas pipelines and cables in October 2023 led to scrutiny of Chinese ships.
The latest incident highlights the vulnerability of critical maritime communications and energy infrastructure and the difficulty of prosecuting acts of sabotage.
Although the ship was flagged by Cameroon, Taiwanese officials said it was owned by Jieyang Trading Co., Ltd. The only listed director of the Hong Kong-registered company is Mainland Chinese citizen Guo Wenjie.
Chunghwa Telecom said data connectivity was restored immediately by rerouting data to other international submarine cables.
But Taipei worries that China may secretly cut off Taiwan’s external communications links to implement any potential attempts to annex the island. 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 Taiwanese government officials told the Financial Times that the damaged cable was part of the trans-Pacific high-speed cable system. The undersea network cable connecting Taiwan to the U.S. West Coast is owned by an international consortium. In addition to Chunghwa Telecom, it also includes US operators AT&T, Japan’s NTT, Korea Telecom and Chinese operators China Telecom and China Unicom.
“Since we are unable to question the captain, we have asked the South Korean authorities to assist in investigating the ship’s next port of destination,” the Taiwanese Coast Guard said. Taiwan’s national security officials said the ship would arrive in Busan in the next few days.
Taiwan’s Coast Guard and other government officials said tracking data from the ship’s automatic identification system signals and satellite data showed that the Shun Hing 39 had towed its anchor at the location where the cable broke.
While a 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 it took too long for the Coast Guard vessel to order an order under international law. The vessel was seized for further investigation.
“This is another example of a very worrying global trend of sabotaging undersea cables,” said a senior national security official in Taiwan. “The ships involved in these incidents are usually dilapidated vessels with little public business. This one It is also in very bad condition. It is similar to a Russian ‘Shadow Fleet’ ship,” he added.
Ship tracking data seen by the Financial Times shows that the “Shun Hing 39” has been plying the waters off Taiwan’s north coast since at least December 8. The official said this phenomenon showed that the cable damage was not a “harmless accident”.
Chinese merchant ships or fishing vessels occasionally take part in some of the large-scale military exercises that Beijing regularly holds near Taiwan. Taipei worries that such “gray zone” operations, below the threshold of war, will make it more difficult to defend against aggression and could eventually escalate into an outright attack.
Additional reporting by Chen Haoqian and Zheng Leng in Hong Kong
