Taiwan blacklists 52 Chinese-owned ships

Taiwan has blacklisted 52 Chinese-owned ships that operate under flags of convenience.

The crackdown follows the severing of a subsea communications cable near Taiwan at the beginning of January. Taiwan’s National Coast Guard Administration identified a Cameroon-registered cargo ship, Shunxin 39 (pictured), as the suspect in the incident.

Taipei will now target vessels flagged under countries like Cameroon, Tanzania, Mongolia, Togo, and Sierra Leone, where it deems ship registration processes often lack stringent safety and regulatory standards.

Of the 52 vessels identified, 15 were deemed threats due to their extended presence in Taiwanese waters over the past year. Among these, one vessel was flagged as a “high threat,” with several others categorised as posing medium or lower levels of risk.

Earlier this month, the Shunxin 39 was ordered to return to waters near the Port of Keelung to be investigated. Due to rough weather, coast guard officers were not able to board the ship for investigation and could not detain it. The ship continued on its way to South Korea.

It was later revealed that the vessel belongs to Hong Kong-based Jie Yang Trading headed by a Chinese citizen.

Taiwan’s National Security Bureau said earlier this month ships which have previously been found to misreport information will be put on a list of ships for priority inspection at ports.

Moreover, if these ships enter within 24 nautical miles of Taiwan’s coast and are close to where undersea cables are, the coast guard will be dispatched to board them and investigate.

Other ships hanging around the Taiwanese coastline have sparked concern. For instance, the Belize-flagged Russian general cargo vessel, Vasily Shukshin, left Russia’s Vostochnyy port on December 8 and loitered off Taiwan’s coast on December 19, according to Ray Powell, director of Stanford University-affiliated maritime analyst group SeaLight.

Powell said the vessel was “aimlessly criss-crossing” the area near Taiwan’s Fangshan undersea cable landing station for three and a half weeks “for no apparent reason,” but that it had since started to return to Russia earlier this week.

According to data provider Windward, the frequency of underwater infrastructure sabotage has increased from just two incidents in 2000 to 75 incidents in 2024 with the seas around Taiwan as well as the Baltic becoming hotspots for ships deliberately dragging anchors to take out critical subsea infrastructure.