As China targets Taiwan’s undersea cables, some locals fear ‘grey zone’ warfare, the ABC reports.
At the Port of Anping in Tainan, Taiwan’s ancient capital, a large cargo ship named Hong Tai 58 sits decaying and riddled with rust.
Once ruled by a pirate warlord named Koxinga, who drove out Dutch colonists in the 1662 siege of Fort Zeelandia, Tainan is now where this crumbling vessel and its captain have been detained since February.
One of the ship’s anchors is missing, likely left lying on the seabed about 10 kilometres west.
There, it’s alleged the captain instructed his sailors to zigzag over the top of Taiwan-Penghu No. 3 communications cable, which connects the 100,000 residents of the outlying Penghu Islands to the rest of Taiwan and the world.
There are 24 of these vital arteries which connect Taiwan to the beating heart of the modern world — the internet — and China has been accused of sabotaging several, including two just this year.
Even though the Chinese Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan, Beijing has labelled what it calls “reunification” as essential to the full rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
Chairman Xi Jinping has been increasingly strident in his statements, refusing to rule out the use of force to seize Taiwan.
In 2023, the severing of two cables connecting the Matsu Islands, which sit close to the Chinese coast, saw their 14,000 residents nearly completely disconnected from the internet for more than a month.
Communications weren’t impacted in Penghu in February.
But the Penghu archipelago sits much nearer to Taiwan’s main island, showing how willing Beijing is to encroach closer and closer in its efforts to pressure the self-ruled democracy.
It also offers a preview of how Beijing might try to isolate Taiwan in any future blockade or invasion.
“I think this is a warning sign,” said Sheng I-che, a researcher and activist on Penghu Island who previously served as CEO of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s Penghu chapter.
“We’ve received a very clear signal, this is the prelude to a coming war.
“Now that we look back, what happened in Crimea in 2014 is gradually happening around Penghu and the surrounding waters of Taiwan.”
The full article is here.
