Taiwan asks South Korea to investigate a Chinese ship that sabotaged telecommunications cables
Taiwan, a close political ally of the United States, Japan and South Korea, asked South Korean authorities for assistance in investigating a Chinese-owned cargo ship on Friday. The vessel is suspected of having severed an undersea internet cable off the northern coast of Taiwan, highlighting the vulnerability of vital offshore communications infrastructure. Taiwan wants the ship inspected or the commander questioned.
The Taiwan Coast Guard and telecommunications provider Chunghwa Telecom said on Saturday that the Shunxing 39 cargo ship likely damaged a communications cable near the Keelung port on Taiwan's north coast on the morning of Jan. 3. This incident follows previous cases in which Chinese ships were involved in disrupting fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea last November and damaging a gas pipeline and cable in October 2023.
Shunxing 39 flies the Cameroonian flag, but is owned by Jie Yang Trading Limited, a company registered in Hong Kong whose only listed director is Guo Wenjie, a Chinese citizen. Chunghwa Telecom said data connections were promptly restored by rerouting traffic to other international undersea cables. The damage was therefore limited, but it could have been a test of a larger scale attack.
Chinese ship similar to the one that damaged the undersea cable
Indeed, Taipei fears that China may secretly cut Taiwan's external communications links as part of a potential annexation attempt. China asserts sovereignty over Taiwan and has threatened to take it by force if necessary. China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not yet responded to requests for comment.
Chunghwa Telecom and Taiwanese government officials informed the Financial Times that the damaged cable belongs to the Trans-Pacific Express Cable System , an undersea internet cable that connects Taiwan to the west coast of the United States. This cable is owned by an international consortium that includes Chunghwa, AT&T (USA), NTT (Japan), Korea Telecom and the Chinese operators China Telecom and China Unicom.
Trans Pacific Express Cable
“Since we could not interrogate the captain, we asked the South Korean authorities to contribute to the investigation in the ship's next port of destination,” explained a Taiwan Coast Guard official. A Taiwanese national security official added that the ship is expected to arrive in Pusan in the next few days.
Taiwan's Coast Guard and other government officials said signal tracking data from the ship's automatic identification system and satellite data indicate that the Shunxing 39 dragged its anchor where the cable broke. Bad weather prevented the vessel from being boarded and inspected, and international law prohibited its seizure for further investigation due to the time that had passed since the accident.
“This is another case of a very worrying global trend of sabotage against undersea cables,” a senior Taiwanese national security official said. “The vessels involved in these incidents are typically dilapidated vessels with little legitimate commercial activity. This is also in very poor condition. It is similar to ships that are part of Russia's 'shadow fleet',” he added.
Ship tracking data reviewed by the FT shows that the Shunxing39 has repeatedly passed through waters near Taiwan's northern coast since at least December 8. The pattern suggests that the damage to the cable was not an "innocent accident," the official said. The ship is currently in the East China Sea.
Chinese commercial or fishing vessels have occasionally participated in the large military exercises that Beijing regularly conducts near Taiwan. Taipei fears that these "greyzone" operations, which do not reach the threshold of war, complicate defense against potential aggression that could escalate into a large-scale attack. For this reason, the Taiwanese authorities want the collaboration of the South Korean authorities, who should at least question the commander.
The Shunxing39 incident underlines these concerns and highlights the challenges Taiwan faces in protecting its critical infrastructure, but also how seemingly harmless commercial vessels can also carry out paramilitary activities. The Eagle S. accident is a lesson.
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The article Taiwan asks South Korea to investigate a Chinese ship that sabotaged telecommunications cables comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/taiwan-chiede-alla-corea-del-sud-dindagare-su-una-nave-cinese-che-avrebbe-sabotato-cavi-per-telecomunicazioni/ on Mon, 06 Jan 2025 07:00:59 +0000.