Taiwan has charged a Chinese ship captain with intentionally damaging subsea cables off the island earlier this year.
Prosecutors charged the man, named only as Wang, over an incident in February. The decision to charge him comes amid a rise in subsea malfunctions in Taiwan.
He was charged last week after prosecutors determined that he deliberately caused damage to the subsea cable.
The Chinese-crewed Hong Tai 58 ship, registered to Togo, was detained by Taiwanese authorities after suspicions that the ship had dropped an anchor near an undersea cable off southwestern Taiwan.
Wang has maintained he's innocent, while Taiwan officials stated he refused to provide details of the ship's owner and "had a bad attitude."
The seven other Chinese nationals detained at the same time as Wang have not been charged and will be sent back to China, added prosecutors.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office has previously described the subsea cable incident as a “common maritime accident."
So far this year, Taiwan has reported five subsea cable malfunctions, up from the three malfunctions in 2023 and 2024.
In January, Taiwanese authorities claimed that a China-linked ship entered its waters and damaged four fibers of a Chunghwa Telecom-operated subsea cable damaged off the coast at Yehliu, New Taipei City, on January 3, 2025. That particular ship was registered to Cameroon.
Later in the same month, Taiwan blamed "natural deterioration" for another subsea cable outage when the subsea cables that connect Matsu with the main Taiwan island were completely cut off on January 22.
Tensions between China and Taiwan, a territory that China claims as its own, have heightened in recent years.
A Chinese fishing vessel was previously blamed for causing damage to the Taiwan-Matsu No. 2 cable, which links the main island of Formosa to the Taiwan-controlled Matsu Islands, back in 2023. Taiwan's National Communications Commission (NCC) said at the time that the vessel severed the cable.
The Taiwanese government, which rejects China's sovereignty claims over the region, argues that the subsea cable attacks caused by China are designed to pressure the area without direct confrontation.
