Cross posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34743645

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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.

[…]

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.

[…]

The Hong Tai 58 was flying under a flag of convenience, registered to the nearly landlocked African nation of Togo.

Its crew and captain are Chinese, and the Taiwanese coastguard alleges it is funded by China.

Prosecutors say the ship’s movements were erratic in the days before the cable was cut, and tracking data shows it had been hanging around the area for some time.

[…]

The cutting of Penghu’s telecommunications cable was the second act of alleged Chinese sabotage just this year.

In January, the Trans-Pacific Express Cable System north of Taiwan was cut in another set of suspicious circumstances.

Authorities alleged a Cameroon-registered, Hong Kong-owned freighter named the Shunxing 39 was responsible, and requests were made for help from South Korea as the vessel was headed towards Busan.

The ship’s owner at the time denied the ship had cut the cable, calling it a “normal trip”.

Weeks later, Taiwan’s digital affairs ministry declared that 10 of its undersea cables would be classified as “critical infrastructure”, which comes with extra security and increased government oversight.

[…]