An undersea cable to Penghu County has been severed, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said today, with a Chinese-funded ship suspected of being responsible.
It comes just a month after a Chinese ship was suspected of severing an undersea cable north of Keelung Harbor.
The National Communications and Cyber Security Center received a report at 3:03am today from Chunghwa Telecom that the No. 3 cable from Taiwan to Penghu was severed 14.7km off the coast of Tainan, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said.
Photo copied by Chiu Chun-fu, Taipei Times
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) upon receiving a report from Chunghwa Telecom began to monitor the Togolese-flagged Hong Tai (宏泰) freighter anchored near the cable, the CGA said in a news release.
The ship was in the area from Saturday at about 7:10pm to around the time when Chunghwa Telecom reported that the cable had been severed, it said.
When the CGA received another report at 3am that the cable had been severed and that external force could have been responsible, it said it stopped the vessel and called for reinforcements.
Photo courtesy of the Coast Guard Administration
Although coast guard personnel could not board and inspect the ship due to a difference in height, it was escorted back to port in Tainan, where prosecutors have started their investigation after detaining the crew, it said.
Despite flying Togo’s flag, Hong Tai is Chinese-owned and all eight crew members on board are Chinese, the CGA said.
Furthermore, the ship’s automatic identification system name does not match what it identified itself as over the radio or what is written on the hull, the CGA said.
After the cable was severed, the digital ministry ordered the company to redirect traffic to other cables connecting Taiwan’s main island to its offshore islands.
The company was also instructed to add the cable to its repair schedule, coordinating with a repair vessel currently in Kaohsiung working to fix the previously damaged Taiwan-Matsu No. 2 and No. 3 cables.
Those two cables are expected to be fully completed by the end of this month and next month, respectively, with the cable connecting Penghu to be fixed afterward, the ministry said.
The ministry has submitted a report to the Executive Yuan labeling Taiwan’s undersea cables as critical infrastructure.
It also said it would move to strengthen Taiwan’s resilience to such issues by establishing more monitoring stations and subsidizing telecom operators’ capacity to repair cables and invest in backup communication infrastructure such as microwave systems.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS