Taiwan’s coastguard has detained a cargo ship and its Chinese crew after an undersea communications cable in the Taiwan Strait was damaged on Tuesday. The coastguard cannot rule out the possibility that the incident was a deliberate “grey zone” act, an act of hostile interference which does not reach the threshold of warfare. The cause of the undersea cable breakage remains to be clarified by further investigation. The coastguard was alerted by Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom company that a communications cable connecting Taiwan’s main island with Penghu had been damaged. A cargo ship was identified as being nearby and intercepted by the coastguard off the coast of Tainan. The crew onboard were Chinese nationals and the ship was believed to be China-funded. Chunghwa stated that the damage did not affect communication as a back-up cable was activated. It is the latest undersea cable to be damaged around Taiwan in recent years. In January, a Chinese-owned, Cameroon-registered vessel was suspected of damaging a cable that ran to the US. The Taiwanese authorities were unable to investigate the vessel due to rough weather and it then sailed to South Korea. In February 2023, damage to cables near the outlying Matsu islands left residents without internet access for weeks. Two Chinese ships were blamed and the government stopped short of calling it a deliberate act on behalf of Beijing.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/25/taiwan-detains-chinese-crewed-cargo-ship-after-undersea-cable-damaged