Taiwan Orders Jailed Chinese Captain to Pay $560,000 for Damages to Cable
A court in Taiwan awarded Chunghwa Telecom more than half a million US dollars in compensation for the damage a Chinese vessel caused to a subsea telecom cable. The financial award comes on top of a three-year prison sentence Taiwan imposed in June 2025 on the Chinese national who was commanding a decrepit vessel with a murky identity.
The Taiwan Coast Guard had reported it was monitoring the vessel, which was broadcasting an identity of Hongtai 168 and reporting registry under the flag of the West African nation of Togo. It had anchored in February 2025, approximately six nautical miles off the fishing village of Jiangjun in southwest Taiwan on the Taiwan Strait. The Coast Guard reports a shore station attempted to contact the vessel seven times after it anchored offshore but received no reply.
It came out in court in June 2025 that the captain, who would only give his name as Wang according to media reports, had ordered two sailors to drop anchor in a well-marked zone prohibiting anchoring and marked on charts to have critical undersea infrastructure. Early on the morning of February 25, the vessel was observed moving in a zigzag pattern. Chunghwa Telecom reported an outage on its cable Tai-Peng 3, which runs to the offshore islands of Penghu.
The 1,800-dwt vessel was apprehended and directed to port for an investigation. Taiwan reported there were eight Chinese nationals aboard and that the ship was in fact the Hong Tai 58. They believed it was controlled by Chinese interests. The captain, whose full name is Wang Yuliang, was ordered to stand trial.
A court in Taiwan convicted the captain in June 2025 and sentenced him to three years in jail. Evidence showed the cable had been subjected to external forces and that it had been snagged by an external force. The captain denied intentionally damaging the cable but admitted it could have happened, calling it simple negligence. He could have been sentenced to up to seven years in jail.
The captain later appealed, but a court in Taiwan rejected his case. The reports said it was determined that there was insufficient evidence against the seven other crewmembers, and they were deported.
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Chunghwa Telecom filed a civil lawsuit seeking the costs it incurred. The company asked for more than $600,000 in damages. It said it had to repair the cable, including the cost of vessels, escort ships, and the cable and other materials. The court awarded it approximately $570,000 in damages to be paid by the captain.
This and several other incidents prompted Taiwan to dramatically increase its monitoring of vessels. It said it was specifically targeting ships with third-world flags like the Togo registry of this vessel. It asserted that the vessels are all Chinese-owned and present an increasing danger to Taiwan as tensions escalate with China and the demands for reunification.