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.”
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Taiwan is to have nine extended holidays next year, led by a nine-day Lunar New Year break, the Cabinet announced yesterday. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday next year matches the length of this year’s holiday, which featured six extended holidays. The increase in extended holidays is due to the Act on the Implementation of Commemorative and Festival Holidays (紀念日及節日實施條例), which was passed early last month with support from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party. Under the new act, the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve is also a national holiday, and Labor Day would no longer be limited
COMMITMENTS: The company had a relatively low renewable ratio at 56 percent and did not have any goal to achieve 100 percent renewable energy, the report said Pegatron Corp ranked the lowest among five major final assembly suppliers in progressing toward Apple Inc’s commitment to be 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030, a Greenpeace East Asia report said yesterday. While Apple has set the goal of using 100 percent renewable energy across its entire business, supply chain and product lifecycle by 2030, carbon emissions from electronics manufacturing are rising globally due to increased energy consumption, it said. Given that carbon emissions from its supply chain accounted for more than half of its total emissions last year, Greenpeace East Asia evaluated the green transition performance of Apple’s five largest final
The first tropical storm of the year in the western North Pacific, Wutip (蝴蝶), has formed over the South China Sea and is expected to move toward Hainan Island off southern China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. The agency said a tropical depression over waters near the Paracel and Zhongsha islands strengthened into a tropical storm this morning. The storm had maximum sustained winds near its center of 64.8kph, with peak gusts reaching 90kph, it said. Winds at Beaufort scale level 7 — ranging from 50kph to 61.5kph — extended up to 80km from the center, it added. Forecaster Kuan Hsin-ping
RSS