Taiwanese hostel worker Wang Chuang-jen’s business took a hammering when undersea telecoms lines serving a Lienchiang County archipelago were cut in February.
“It was very inconvenient,” said the 35-year-old from Beigan (北竿), the county’s second-largest island, where customers struggled to book or pay online due to slow connectivity. “We all heavily depend on the Internet.”
The disconnection not only caused headaches for businesspeople such as Wang, it also highlighted Taiwan’s digital vulnerability at a time of heightened menace from China.
Photo: Jack Moore, AFP
The two cables were severed about 50km from the county within days of each other.
Locals, as well as the National Communications Commission, said Chinese fishing vessels or sand dredgers — which often drop anchor or scrape the seabed in Taiwanese waters — might have done the damage.
“I think China is aware of the situation,” Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) said. “It would have been easy to restrain such an act of sabotage, but it didn’t.”
There have been nearly a dozen such incidents since 2021, and Taiwanese authorities are seeking solutions.
While cables linking Lienchiang and Kinmen counties are shallow enough to be threatened by fishing vessels, experts have said that even the more deeply laid cables along the north, west and south of the counties’ main islands are susceptible to sabotage.
While its lines were cut, the Lienchiang archipelago — home to about 10,000 people and only a few kilometers from China — relied on a patchy mountain-based microwave backup system until repairs were made late last month.
Authorities are seeking a sturdier alternative on a nationwide scale.
The Ministry of Digital Affairs said it has a two-year, US$18 million plan to place satellite receivers in 700 places at home and abroad, to maintain government communications “during emergencies such as natural disasters or wars,” adding that it is “willing to cooperate with any qualified satellite service provider.”
Recent Chinese war games around Taiwan underlined the urgency.
The drills came after President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) meeting with US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California earlier this month.
During the visit, two US lawmakers reportedly talked with Tsai about Taiwan using Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system, which has been deployed in Ukraine since its invasion by Russia.
Experts have said that the disruption in places such as Lienchiang has already furnished Beijing with invaluable intelligence.
“It definitely offers an opportunity for China to observe the digital resilience of the military and civilians in Matsu,” military expert Tzeng Yi-suo (曾怡碩) said in Taipei.
Fishers in Lienchiang, who rely on digital signals to take customers’ orders, described the frustrating disruption.
“The [Internet] speed was very, very slow, or the messages even couldn’t get through. When people called me, the line was cut before I could finish even one sentence,” fisher Wang Chia-Wen said.
Analysts said Taiwan’s undersea cables could be cut by uncrewed Chinese submarines, and their terrestrial terminals attacked with rockets or special forces.
“China’s invasion would try to pick off Taiwan’s communication settings,” said Richard Hu (胡瑞舟), a retired general and military expert at National Chengchi University. “The incidents this time have increased the doubt concerning Taiwan’s readiness level.”
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