Taiwan asks South Korea for help over Chinese ship after subsea cable damaged

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Taiwan on Friday asked South Korea for help in investigating a Chinese-owned vessel suspected of cutting a subsea cable off its northern coast.

Taiwan’s telecom operator Chunghwa Telecom and the Taiwan Coast Guard said on Saturday that the cargo ship Shunxing39 damaged a communication cable – near the port of Keelung on Taiwan’s north coast – on the morning of January 3.

This follows incidents where Chinese vessels have come under scrutiny while laying fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea was isolated Last November and a gas pipeline and cable was damaged There in October 2023.

The latest incident highlights the vulnerability and difficulties in prosecuting sabotage of critical offshore communications and energy infrastructure.

While the ship sailed under the Cameroonian flag, Taiwanese officials said it was owned by Ji Yang Trading Limited. The only listed director of the Hong Kong-registered company is Guo Wenjie, a mainland Chinese citizen.

Chunghwa Telecom reported that data connections were immediately restored by rerouting data to other international submarine cables.

But Taipei worries that China could secretly cut off Taiwan’s external communications links in a possible 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 Taiwanese government officials told the Financial Times that the damaged cable is part of the Trans-Pacific Express cable system. The subsea internet cable connecting Taiwan to the US West Coast is owned by an international consortium. Besides Chunghwa, it includes US operator AT&T, Japan’s NTT, Korea Telecom and Chinese operators China Telecom and China Unicom.

“Since it was not possible for us to interrogate the captain, we have asked South Korean authorities to assist in the investigation at the ship’s next destination port,” said a Taiwan Coast Guard official. A Taiwanese national security official said the ship was due to arrive in Pusan ​​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 the Shunxing 39 had dragged its anchor to the spot where the cable snapped.

While a coastguard vessel inspected the ship’s exterior and established radio contact with the captain, its officers could not board it due to rough weather and order its detention for further investigation under international law, as there was too much time. has passed since the incident, officials said.

“This is another case in a very worrying global trend of sabotage against subsea cables,” said a senior national security official in Taiwan. “Vessels involved in these incidents are usually rundown vessels with little above board business. This is also in very poor condition. It is like a ship that is part of Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’,” he added.

According to ship tracking data seen by the FT, the Shanxing 39 had been criss-crossing waters off Taiwan’s northern coast since at least December 8. The pattern suggested the cable damage was not an “innocent accident,” the official said.

Chinese commercial or fishing vessels occasionally participate in some of the large military exercises that Beijing regularly holds near Taiwan. Taipei worries that such “greyzone” operations, on the brink of war, will make it difficult to defend against aggression that could eventually escalate into outright attack.

Additional reporting by Chan Ho-him and Cheng Leng in Hong Kong