Taiwan is investigating whether a ship linked to China is responsible for damaging one of the undersea cables that connects the island to the internet, the latest reminder of how vulnerable its critical infrastructure is to damage from China.
The incident comes as anxiety in Europe has risen over apparent acts of sabotage, including ones aimed at such undersea communication cables. Two fiber-optic cables under the Baltic Sea were severed in November, prompting officials from Sweden, Finland and Lithuania to halt a Chinese-flagged commercial ship in the area for weeks over its possible involvement.
In Taiwan, communications were quickly rerouted after the damage was detected, and there was no major outage. The island’s main telecommunications provider, Chunghwa Telecom, received a notification Friday morning that the cable, known as the Trans-Pacific Express Cable, had been damaged. That cable also connects to South Korea, Japan, China and the United States.
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