- Taiwan said it believes China was behind damage to one of its undersea cables.
- It said a Cameron-flagged vessel damaged a cable in the Taiwan Strait.
- It comes after similar incidents involving cables in the Baltic Sea were also linked to sabotage.
Taiwan suspects China of being behind damage to a crucial subsea communications cable just off its northern coast.
The damage occurred on Friday near Keelung, according to The Taipei Times, with Taiwanese coast guard officials believing a Cameroon-flagged vessel, the Shunxin 39, was responsible.
Despite being Cameroon-flagged, the ship is reportedly owned by a Hong Kong firm.
According to reports, the Taiwanese coast guard ordered the vessel to stop so it could be investigated, but because of rough weather conditions officials were unable to board the tanker, which continued on to its destination in South Korea.
“This is another case of a very worrying global trend of sabotage against subsea cables,” a senior Taiwanese national security official told The Financial Times.
Marco Ho Cheng-hui, CEO of Taiwanese civil defense organization Kuma Academy, told The Taipei Times that China was testing the limits of international tolerance through escalating “grey zone” attacks, or covert attacks to undermine its security.
“This is not an isolated event,” he said.
As an island, Taiwan is highly vulnerable to subsea cable disruptions, and analysts have warned that it’s a weakness China could target as tensions escalate further.
The cable damaged Friday was the $500 million Trans-Pacific Express cable linking Taiwan and other parts of East Asia with the US West Coast, according to reports. The cables run for thousands of miles under the sea.
Chunghwa Telecom, one of the companies that operates the cable, said that the damage didn’t cause major disruptions as it was able to divert data.
The incident is the latest possible attack on underwater cables.
In the Baltic Sea, there’s been a series of mysterious cable severances in recent months, which European officials said could have been caused by Russian sabotage.
On Christmas Day, energy and telecoms cables were severed near Finland, with Finnish officials saying a tanker likely used by Russia to evade oil sanctions was responsible.
A Chinese vessel, NewNew Polar Bear, was also linked by European officials to damage to subsea cables in the Baltic in November.
Analysts told Business Insider last year that China and Russia see undersea cables as potential targets amid growing tensions with the US and its allies.
China has long menaced Taiwan, and the US has signaled that it could help Taiwan defend itself if it was attacked.
