Taiwan’s coastguard has detained a cargo ship and its Chinese crew after an undersea cable in the Taiwan Strait was damaged on Tuesday, February 25, 2025.

Taiwan’s coast guard said in a statement that the vessel suspected of damaging the cable connecting Taiwan to its outlying Penghu Islands carried a “flag of convenience” and was crewed by eight Chinese nationals.

A “flag of convenience” vessel is one that flies the flag of a country other than the country of ownership.

The statement added that the ship “Hong Tai,” registered in the West African nation of Togo with Chinese funding, had been lingering near the cable in waters off the southwestern coast of Taiwan since Saturday evening and did not respond to multiple broadcasts from Taiwan’s coast guard.

Shortly after the ship dropped anchor in the early hours of Tuesday, Taiwan’s telecom company, Chunghwa Telecom detected that the cable had been disconnected.

The vessel did not respond to attempts by the authorities to communicate with it by speaker and radio, the coastguard told the Guardian.

It was then intercepted and escorted back to Anping port.

Ownership of the cargo ship is unclear – tracking and registration data shows at least three different ship names associated with the vessel’s maritime identification number. The coastguard said the vessel was “China-funded” but did not elaborate.

Chunghwa said that a back-up cable had come online and communication was not affected.

Taiwan has drawn up a list of more than 50 ships for close monitoring, which it believes are sailing under flags of convenience, including from Togo, but are owned by Chinese companies.

The list, first reported by the Financial Times includes boats that have lingered in or near Taiwan’s territorial waters for significant amounts of time.

Possibility Of A Chinese “Gray Zone Operation”

Taiwanese authorities said that they could not rule out the possibility that it was a deliberate “grey zone” act.

They added that whether the cause of the undersea cable breakage was intentional sabotage or a simple accident remains to be clarified by further investigation in accordance with national security-level guidance.

“Grey zone” refers to an act of hostile interference which does not reach the threshold of warfare.

It is the latest undersea cable to be damaged around Taiwan in recent years.

In January, the Taiwanese authorities investigated a Chinese-owned, Cameroon-registered vessel, Shunxing 39, which was suspected of dragging its anchor and damaging a cable north-east of the island that ran to the US.

Taiwan’s coastguard had ordered the vessel to return to Taiwanese waters for investigation but was unable to board due to rough weather. The Shunxing 39 then sailed to South Korea.

In February 2023, damage to two cables near the outlying Matsu islands, close to the Chinese mainland, left residents without internet access for weeks.

Two Chinese ships were blamed for cutting the cables in two incidents almost a week apart. However, the government stopped short of calling it a deliberate act on behalf of Beijing.

The incidents have raised concerns among Taiwan authorities of “gray zone” activities that could hamper the island’s internet and communications with the outside world.

Those concerns come as Taiwan has faced increasing intimidation from Beijing, which claims the self-ruled democracy as its own territory and has vowed to take control of it, by force if necessary.

They also follow a string of incidents in recent years of damage to undersea infrastructure worldwide, including communications cables.

Two high-profile incidents in the Baltic Sea involved Chinese ships and remain under investigation.

According to NATO Chief, Mark Rutte, more than 95% of internet traffic globally is carried via undersea cables, with some 1.3 million kilometers of such cabling securing an estimated $10 trillion dollars of international trade daily.