TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan is stepping up its efforts to protect its undersea cables despite inherent structural challenges to this new element of maritime defense, according to an in-depth report by Nikkei Asia.
In recent years, China has expanded its arsenal of gray-zone tactics used against Taiwan to include the severing of undersea internet cables. The sabotage is often carried out by a foreign-flagged commercial vessel operating with a Chinese crew.
Taiwan relies on 14 cables for its international links, while 10 cables connect to the nation’s outlying islands, per the report. Acts of cable sabotage peaked in 2023, when 12 incidents occurred, leading that same year to amendments to the Telecommunications Management Act that allow for 10-year sentences for cable saboteurs. The following year, only four incidents were recorded, though that number began ticking up again this year.
On Feb. 25, a Togo-flagged vessel with a Chinese crew cut an undersea cable with its anchor, prompting the Coast Guard to board the ship and detain the crew. The captain, surnamed Wang, was ultimately sentenced to three years in jail, sparking protests from Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, which described the severing of the undersea cable as a “common maritime incident.” The charges against the captain were the first of their kind in Taiwan.
Taiwan has identified 96 ships that it considers suspicious, per data from the Tokyo MOU cited by the report, but tracking them full-time remains an impossibility — let alone detaining them in every suspicious circumstance. Countries whose flagged vessels pose a high risk include Cameroon, Togo, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Mongolia.
The tangle of overlapping jurisdictions involved in cases of undersea cable severing heightens the difficulty faced by Taiwan, according to experts cited by Nikkei. Even if a specific case can be proven, adequate enforcement and by extension deterrence may remain out of reach.
Further complicating matters, Taiwan lacks the domestic capacity to repair cables, resulting in long wait times for assistance from foreign partners. A new Coast Guard budget of NT$29.5 billion (US$972 million) has funds earmarked for undersea cable defense, but it’s unclear if this includes upgrades to repair capacity.
One part of the defense strategy may be as simple as just building more cables, several which are currently under construction, including on the eastern side of Taiwan, perhaps making them less vulnerable to Chinese attack in a potential conflict scenario. Cable projects backed by Google and Meta, both set for completion this year, will link Taiwan’s east coast with regional partners like Japan and the Philippines as well as the US west coast.
