(Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration)
Taiwan has detained a Chinese-crewed ship over suspicions it deliberately damaged an undersea cable to the island.
On Tuesday, Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration reported intercepting the “Hongtai 168” while investigating a disruption involving an undersea fiber cable for a local mobile carrier, Chunghwa Telecom.
The report suggests Taiwan authorities caught the Hongtai in the act of damaging the undersea cable. Taiwan’s coast guard noted it had already deployed a patrol boat to monitor the ship at 2:30 a.m. local time. The boat then detected Hongtai dropping its anchor. At 3:03 a.m., Chunghwa Telecom began noticing problems with the undersea cable.
“Upon detecting that the vessel had dropped anchor and remained stationary, authorities immediately issued a broadcast order for it to leave and maintained full surveillance,” Taiwan’s coast guard added.
After receiving the outage report from Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwanese authorities then seized the ship and escorted it to Anping Port in Tainan City. “The case is being handled at a national security level,” the coast guard added.
Taiwan has become increasingly concerned about suspected efforts from China to disrupt internet communications to the island. Last month, a separate Chinese vessel was suspected of damaging another cable to Taiwan.
These so-called “gray zone” operations occur when China has long sought to retake Taiwan and undermine the island’s democratically elected government. In this case, the Hongtai 168 flew the flag from the African country Togo. However, Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration says the ship was crewed by eight Chinese nationals.
“The Coast Guard emphasized that the cause of the submarine cable break—whether it was intentional sabotage or a simple accident—remains under investigation,” it said. “Authorities are not ruling out the possibility that this incident is part of China's gray-zone interference operations.”
Meanwhile, Chunghwa Telecom reports it's been re-routing communication through a backup cable. "The voice, mobile, Internet, and various communication services of Taiwan and Penghu users were not affected," it said.