By James Pomfret and Yimou Lee
HONG KONG/TAIPEI (Reuters) – The Chinese director of a company whose ship Taiwan suspects of damaging an undersea communications cable said on Wednesday there was no evidence the ship was involved, an incident that alarmed the Taipei government.
Taiwan’s coast guard said it sent a ship to investigate a report on Friday from telecommunications provider Chunghwa. telecommunications (BCBA:) that an underwater communications cable had been damaged off the island’s north coast.
Upon arriving at the scene, he found the “Shunxin 39”, with a Chinese crew and registered in both Cameroon and Tanzania, which he asked to return to the port of Taiwan for an investigation.
In a statement, the coast guard said bad weather prevented it from boarding the ship for verification, but it “cannot rule out the possibility” that the ship was involved in “gray zone” activities. However, he did not provide any direct evidence of this.
Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has repeatedly complained about Chinese activities in the “gray zone” around the island designed to pressure it without direct confrontation, such as balloon flyovers and sand dredging.
Taiwan’s Digital Ministry 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, director of Jie Yang, denied any involvement of the ship, although he confirmed that it was in the area. Taiwan authorities did not arrest him after radio exchanges with the captain, he added.
“There is no evidence,” he told Reuters by phone, dismissing the accusation that he was responsible for the damage. “I spoke to the captain of the ship and for us it was a normal trip.”
Speaking in Mandarin, Guo confirmed that the ship was owned by Jie Yang Trading, according to Hong Kong company registration records, which was established in 2020, with Guo as the sole director.
His listed address in Hong Kong was a single room in a shared office space for a secretarial services company in a neglected industrial building.
China has not responded to requests for comment on the incident, while Taiwan, which firmly rejects China’s sovereignty claims, says communications were not affected.
In response to Guo’s comments, Taiwan’s coast guard said it could not yet assess the ship’s “true intent” from tracking data.
The ship had remained in waters near northern Taiwan since early December until its transmission signal was turned off on Jan. 3, shipping data showed.
Guo declined to specify why the ship had remained in the area, or the purpose of the trip, but said 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 nearby waters.
“We followed normal rules and procedures. Otherwise, Taiwan would have investigated and detained us.”
The incident has alarmed Taiwan security officials, who will brief Taipei-based diplomats on the matter this week, sources familiar with the matter say.
“We must inform everyone that such behavior does not only affect Taiwan. It could also affect 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.”
Taiwan has been particularly nervous about the vulnerability of undersea communications cables following incidents of complaints from Baltic Sea nations since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Last month, Taiwan’s Presidential Office held its first “tabletop” exercise involving government agencies beyond the military, simulating scenarios such as a military escalation with China and the severing of international maritime links, officials said.
In 2023, two undersea cables to the Taiwan-controlled Matsu Islands, which lie off the Chinese coast, were cut, disconnecting its 14,000 residents from the Internet.
Authorities said at the time that initial findings showed that a Chinese fishing vessel and a Chinese freighter caused the outage, but there was no evidence that Beijing deliberately tampered with the cables.
In recent years, Taiwan has worked to bolster its ability to deal with emergencies, from disasters to military conflicts, including alternative communications such as satellites if its international maritime cables are cut.