Chinese ships cut Internet of Taiwan’s outlying islands

• Those living in Taiwan’s Matsu Islands, a group of outlying islands closer to neighbouring China, rely on two submarine Internet cables leading to Taiwan’s main island.
• The first cable was severed by a Chinese fishing vessel about 50km out at sea on 2 Feb. On Feb 8, a Chinese cargo ship cut the second, according to Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan’s largest service provider and owner of the cables.
• The islanders in the meantime were forced to hook up to a limited Internet via microwave radio transmission, a more mature technology, as backup. It means that one could wait hours to send a text. Calls would drop, and videos were unwatchable.
• Apart from disrupting lives, the loss of the Internet cables, seemingly innocuous, has huge implications for national security.
• Some experts suspect that China may have cut the cables deliberately as part of its harassment of the self-ruled island it considers part of its territory, to be reunited by force if necessary.
• The cables had been cut a total of 27 times in the past five years, according to Chunghwa Telecom.
• Taiwan’s coast guard gave chase to the fishing vessel that cut the first cable on 2 Feb, but it went back into Chinese waters.
• So far, the Taiwanese government has not pointed a direct finger at Beijing.

External Link : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/taiwan-china-ships-cut-internet-outlying-islands-3333376