The Chinese director of a firm whose vessel Taiwan suspects of having damaged an undersea communications cable said yesterday that there was no evidence the ship was involved.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said it sent a ship to investigate a report on Friday last week from telecom provider Chunghwa Telecom that an undersea communications cable had been damaged off the north coast.
The authorities say communications were unaffected by the cable damage.
Photo copied by Chiu Chun-fu, Liberty Times
Arriving at the scene, the CGA ship found the Chinese-crewed Shunxing 39, registered both in Cameroon and Tanzania, which it requested to return to port in Taiwan for an investigation.
In a statement, the CGA said bad weather kept it from boarding the ship for verification, but it "cannot rule out the possibility" the ship was engaged in "gray zone" activities. However, it did not provide any direct evidence of this.
The CGA has gathered information and sent the evidence to the Keelung District Prosecutors' Office, Cabinet spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference in Taipei today.
Lee said the CGA is to continue monitoring targets in the vicinity of the undersea cables and would investigate and collect evidence if a similar incident happened again.
The Ministry of Digital Affairs has said the sea cable was cut on Jan. 3, but service was not affected after backup cables were activated.
Radio communications were exchanged with the ship, which is registered to a Hong Kong company called Jie Yang Trading, shipping records show.
In his first public comments on the incident, Guo Wenjie, the director of Jie Yang, denied any involvement of the ship, although confirmed it had been in the area.
Taiwan's authorities did not detain it after radio exchanges with the captain, he added.
"There's no evidence at all," he told Reuters by telephone, dismissing the accusation that it was responsible for the damage.
"I spoke to the ship captain and for us it was a normal trip," he said.
Guo confirmed the ship was owned by Jie Yang Trading, shown by Hong Kong companies registry records to have been set up in 2020, with Guo as the sole director.
Its listed Hong Kong address was a single room in a cosharing office space for a secretarial services company in an industrial building.
In a written statement sent to Reuters late yesterday, China's Taiwan Affairs Office said globally there were more than 100 such incidents of damage to undersea cables a year and they are "common maritime accidents."
With the facts still unclear, Taiwan is making accusations "out of thin air" and intentionally hyping up the "so-called gray zone threat from the mainland," it added, without directly saying whether the ship in question was involved or not.
Responding to that statement, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said the case was being investigated and would proceed based on the evidence.
"Internationally, Chinese ships flying flags of convenience have the mark of evil about them," it said, pointing to investigations in Baltic states about Chinese ships suspected of damaging undersea cables there.
Taiwan has previously experienced damage to cables to Kinmen and Lienchiang counties, the council said.
Responding to Guo's comments, the CGA said it was not yet able to gauge the ship's "real intention" from tracking data.
The vessel had lingered in the waters just off Taiwan's north since early last month until its transmitting signal was turned off on Friday last week, shipping data showed.
Guo declined to specify why the ship had remained in the area, or the purpose of the voyage, but said the Taiwan authorities had only sought details of its GPS movements.
"I don't understand why there has been so much news about this," Guo said. "The ship had dropped anchor, so it had stopped in the nearby waters.
"We followed the rules and normal procedures. If not, then Taiwan would have investigated and detained us," he added.
The incident has alarmed Taiwan's security officials, who are set to brief Taipei-based diplomats on the matter this week, sources familiar with the matter said.
"We must inform everyone that such behavior doesn't just affect Taiwan. It could also hit international communications," a senior Taiwan security official told Reuters on condition of anonymity as the matter is sensitive. "It is relevant to the interests of many countries."
In 2023, two undersea cables near Lienchiang County were cut, disconnecting their 14,000 residents from the Internet.
Authorities said at the time initial findings showed a Chinese fishing vessel and a Chinese freighter had caused the disruption, but there was no evidence Beijing had deliberately tampered with the cables.
In recent years, Taiwan has worked to beef up its capacity to cope with emergencies from disasters to military conflict, including alternative communications such as satellites if its international sea cables are cut.
Additional reporting by CNA
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