Taiwan suspects Chinese ships cut islands' internet cables

Taiwan residents on distant islands have begun leaving in droves after two underwater web cables linking the communities to the surface world had been lower, experiences say.

Authorities in Taiwan stated China was behind the severing of the cables linking the 14,000 residents on the Matsu Islands with the surface world.

Now many islanders – reliant on the web for reserving a health care provider’s appointment, paying an electrical energy invoice or receiving a package deal – are leaving, the Telegraph experiences.

Thousands of residents of Taiwan’s outlying islands close to the Chinese coast have been with out the web for the previous month. Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan’s largest service supplier and proprietor of the 2 submarines cables that serve Matsu islands, says Chinese vessels lower them (AP)

Lin Shengyue, aged 80, stated youthful individuals had been leaving in droves.

“It’s more of a problem for younger people glued to their mobiles.

“That’s why all of them ran off to the primary (Taiwan) island.”

He said the only people left were “previous fogies'” and the soldiers who guard the islands, some of which are only 10km from the China coast.

Taiwanese officials blamed two Chinese ships for cutting the cables last month.

But Taiwan’s government stopped short of calling it a deliberate act on the part of Beijing, and there was no direct evidence to show the Chinese ships were responsible.

Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan’s largest internet service provider and owner of the two submarines cables, says Chinese vessels cut cables that serve Matsu islands. (Associated Press)

The islanders have been forced to hook up to a limited internet via microwave radio transmission, a more mature technology, as backup. It means they could wait hours to send a text. Calls would drop, and videos were unwatchable.

“Lots of vacationers would cancel their reserving as a result of there is no web. Nowadays, the web performs a really massive function in individuals’s lives,” said Chen, who lives in Beigan, one of Matsu’s main residential islands.

Apart from disrupting lives, the loss of the internet cables, seemingly innocuous, has huge implications for national security.

As the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has shown, Russia has made taking out internet infrastructure one of the key parts of its strategy. Some experts suspect 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.

Coffee shop owner Chiu Sih-chi looks at his mobile phone at his shop in Nangan, part of Matsu Islands. (AP)

China has long claimed Taiwan as a breakaway territory and pledged to reuniite it with the mainland.

Beijing regularly sends warplanes and navy ships toward Taiwan as part of tactics to intimidate the island’s democratic government. Concerns about China’s invasion, and Taiwan’s preparedness to withstand it, have increased since the war in Ukraine.

The cables had been cut a total of 27 times in the past five years, but it was unclear which country the vessels hailed from, based on data from Chunghwa Telecom.

– Reported with Associated Press