Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: KevinAction/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 3.0
A CHINESE-OWNED VESSEL has been accused of cutting a submarine cable near Keelung Harbor.
The vessel in question was initially reported as the Shunxin-39, which is flagged to Cameroon and Tanzania. However, the name of the vessel is self-evidently Chinese, which is an immediate tell that the vessel is Chinese-owned.
This has not prevented reports in some western media outlets that do not seem to be aware of this fact. But it has since been reported that the vessel is owned by a Hong Kong company with a Chinese director, confirming this fact. The company is Jie Yang Trading Limited, whose sole director Guo Wenjie, has an address listed in Guangdong. Seven Chinese nationals were onboard as crew.
Quite unusually, the ship appeared to have two sets of Automatic Identification System equipment operating onboard. One was registered to the Shunxin-39, while another was registered to a vessel called the Xing Shun-39. There is no vessel called the Shunxin-39 registered to the International Maritime Organization, suggesting that the true identity of the vessel is the Xing Shun-39. This further raises questions about possible wrongdoing by the vessel.
The incident in question was reported to the Taiwanese Coast Guard Administration by the Chunghwa Telecom shortly before 1 PM on January 3rd. But among the first reports of the incident occurred on social media on January 4th. For its part, the Chunghwa Telecom stated that service was not affected because of back-up systems that were in place.
The Taiwanese Coast Guard has requested the assistance of South Korea in an investigation, seeing as the Shunxin-39 is slated to travel there next. Though the Taiwanese Coast Guard sought to board the vessel for an inspection, they were unable to do so because of weather conditions.
That the submarine cable was deliberately cut was suspected because the Shunxin-39 traveled in a criss-cross pattern while dragging its anchor. The cutting of the submarine cable occurs after a similar incident after a Chinese-flagged cargo vessel, the Yi Peng 3, was accused of cutting two submarine cables in the Baltic Sea in November. The submarine cables connected Germany and Finland, as well as Lithuania and Sweden. The Chinese government was later accused of interfering in the investigation into the incident with the Yi Peng.
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Taiwan faced a similar incident when two submarine cables to the outlying island of Mazu were cut by Chinese vessels in February 2023. As a result of the cut cables, telecommunications with Mazu became difficult, sending a text message taking fifteen to twenty minutes.
In the wake of the incident raising security concerns for communications, Taiwan sought to build up infrastructure to avoid similar incidents. While StarLink was considered as a satellite Internet provider, concerns about owner Elon Musk’s links to China led Taiwan to instead choose UK provider OneWeb.
China’s cutting of submarine cables has been termed another form of grey-zone warfare. If anything, international attention to the cut cable outside of Keelung Harbor may not have deterred it.
On January 6th, a Mongolia-flagged vessel with another recognizably Chinese name, the Baoshun, was driven away by the Taiwanese Coast Guard after being found to move in a zig-zag pattern near submarine cables off the coast of Shimen District in New Taipei. As such, it is possible that the targeting of Taiwan’s submarine cables is a new form of grey zone activity that will become increasingly common going forward. If so, the targeting of submarine cables would be an attempt to engender the perception that China can cut Taiwan’s submarine cables and disable critical infrastructure quite easily.
Such grey zone activity would be in line with the incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone and naval activity that already takes place daily. Part of the aim with such moves would be to gather data on Taiwan’s response pattern to breaks in critical infrastructure. But, to this extent, if this involves Chinese vessels–whether flagged to other countries or not–this could entail the continued integration of China’s civilian and military fleets.
Such acts should be a concern for Taiwan, given that Chinese-owned vessels operate in waters occurring around Taiwan quite regularly. The presence of such vessels is often for legitimate cargo traffic or maritime fishing, but it is also the case that China can weaponize its civilian fleet against Taiwan in this way. In line with how China has sought to depict Taiwan as the aggressor when it comes to grey zone activity, it can be expected that China will try to frame any actions that Taiwan takes against Chinese vessels as aggression from Taiwan against China, to build a political narrative that Taiwan is at fault when it comes to the broader escalation of cross-strait tensions.