When a Taiwanese telecoms company detected that an international undersea cable was damaged earlier this month, it worked to divert internet traffic from the broken line to keep customers on the island connected.

In 2023, the outlying Matsu Islands, within view of the Chinese coast, endured patchy internet for months after two undersea internet cables broke. These fiber optic cables that connect Taiwan to the internet suffered about 30 such breaks between 2017 and 2023.

Taiwan suspects China of being behind damage to a crucial subsea communications cable just off its northern coast, which occurred last week.

More evidence of Beijing’s liking for gray zone warfare, or a murky claim with odd African entanglements? Taiwanese authorities have asserted that a China-linked ship entered its waters and damaged a submarine cable.

The incident caused only minimal disruption of service but sent a message about the vulnerability of the island and its internet.

Taiwan has asked South Korea for assistance investigating a Chinese-owned ship suspected of cutting a subsea cable off its northern coast on Friday. Taiwan telecoms operator Chunghwa Telecom and the Taiwan Coast Guard said on Saturday that the cargo vessel Shunxing39 was believed to have caused damage to a communications cable — close to the port of Keelung on Taiwan’s north coast — on the morning of January 3.

Taiwan has accused a Chinese-owned ship of severing a critical data cable off its northern coast on Friday. Officials in Taipei discovered that four cores of an international submarine cable, which transmits data to America’s AT&T,