Off Taiwan again

Submarine cable damage: Freighter from China detained

A cargo ship with a Chinese crew was detained.

(Bild: EPA)

According to Taiwanese reports, another undersea communications cable has been damaged around the island of Taiwan. A cargo ship with a Chinese crew was detained, the Taiwanese coast guard announced on Tuesday.

Whether the damage was sabotage or an accident must now be clarified. It could be an intervention by China in the so-called gray zone, it said. These are destabilizing acts that are not yet considered acts of war.

According to the Taiwanese Ministry of Digital Affairs, the telecommunications company Chunghwa Telecom announced that the cable between the Penghu Islands in the Taiwan Strait, which is of strategic importance, and Taiwan had been damaged. The ship "Hongtai", registered in Togo, was then "escorted" to Taiwan, the coast guard explained. The crew consisted of eight Chinese and the ship was also financed by China.

Parallels to cable damage in the Baltic Sea
China regards Taiwan as a renegade province that should be reunited with the mainland - using military force if necessary. Beijing has stepped up its military activities around the island in recent years.

Most recently, there have been repeated incidents of damage to Taiwanese submarine cables. Earlier incidents were blamed on natural causes or Chinese ships. Similar incidents are currently occurring more frequently in the Baltic Sea, where the countries bordering NATO have Russia under suspicion.

The conflict over Taiwan dates back to the civil war in China: after the defeat of the communists, the National Chinese government fled to Taiwan with its troops. Since then, the island has been governed independently, while the Communist People's Republic was proclaimed in Beijing in 1949.