Taiwan suspects China of latest attack on undersea cables

Taiwan suspects that China was behind the cutting of an international undersea telecom cable early Friday morning.

According to Taiwanese media reports, the Shunxin-39, a Cameroon-flagged cargo ship, was intercepted by the country’s coast guard about 13 kilometers off the north coast of Taiwan late Friday afternoon and ordered to return closer to shore for an investigation. Rough weather prevented them from boarding the vessel, however, and the Shunxin-39 was able to continue en route to a port in South Korea.

Taiwan authorities said that although the Shunxin-39 is registered in Cameroon, it belongs to Jie Yang Trading Limited of Hong Kong headed by Guo Wenjie, a citizen of China.

Chunghwa Telecom, which is part of an international consortium that owns the cable, said it had been able to reroute telecom traffic to other cables, and that service continued uninterrupted. The $500 million Trans-Pacific Express cable has linked countries in East Asia with the United States’ West Coast since 2008.

Taiwan has experienced several dozen incidents of damage to its underwater telecom cables in recent years, without being able to definitively identify the source of the attacks, and has appealed to the European Union for help.

The Taiwan cable attacks follow the severing of an undersea power cable between Finland and Estonia on Christmas Day that Finland pinned on Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers.

Such so-called gray-zone attacks have multiplied since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago as Beijing and Moscow have tested the ability and readiness of the West to withstand hybrid forms of aggression.