The Taiwanese coast guard on Tuesday detained a cargo ship with a Chinese crew and escorted it to Taiwan after an underwater telecommunications cable was found to have been damaged.
"The cause of the underwater cable break, whether it was due to intentional sabotage or simply an accident, is still pending further investigation for clarification," the coast guard said in a statement.
"All eight crew members are Chinese nationals and [we] are not ruling out the possibility of grey zone harassment," it added.
"Grey zone" is how Taiwan refers to activities which it says China carries out to apply pressure without engaging in direct confrontation, such as sending weather balloons over its territory or sand dredging in its waters.
Taiwan: where was the damaged cable?
Network operator Chunghwa Telecom said that the strategically important cable connected the Penghu Islands in the sensitive Taiwan Strait to mainland Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory.
Taiwan's Ministry for Digital Affairs said that communications services were not affected after data was directed to other cables.
The coast guard said that the Chinese-crewed Hongtai 58, a ship registered in Togo, dropped anchor off the southwestern coast of Taiwan around the time the cable was disconnected.
A senior security official told the Reuters news agency that the vessel had lingered in the waters since Saturday, "beyond the normal range," and did not respond to repeated calls by the coast guard.
The official said the government is treating the case as a matter of national security.
Beijing is yet to comment on the incident, but it's not the first time that Chinese or Chinese-crewed ships have been accused of involvement in damage to submarine cables.
Taiwan has already reported five cases of cable malfunctions this year, compared with just three each in 2024 and 2023, according to the digital ministry.
Similar incidents involving underwater communications cables in the Baltic Sea have also prompted diplomatic disputes between European countries and Russia in recent months.
Source: DW
Bd-pratidin English/Lutful Hoque
