🛰️ Taiwan Gray Zone & Submarine Cable Monitor

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Taiwan's Submarine
Cable Infrastructure

Law of the Sea 04 • 4 Landing Stations • 12 Cable Systems • Outer-Island Redundancy

In short

Taiwan's international cables are heavily concentrated at four landing stations — Toucheng, Tamsui, and Bali in the north, Fangshan in the south — carrying roughly 12 international cable systems that land on the main island. The island has about 14 international cables in total plus ~10 domestic cables connecting the outer islands. The cross-strait Kinmen–Xiamen cable (~21 km) and Tamsui–Fuzhou (TSE, ~260 km) are geopolitically sensitive. Most fragile are the outer islands: Matsu has only 2 cables and Kinmen just 1+1 backup, so simultaneous damage can mean weeks offline. Landing-station concentration and thin outer-island redundancy are Taiwan's two structural weaknesses.

SERIES → Maritime Rights Int'l Law Enforcement TW Cables Global Cables
Open a cable map and you see bundles of thin lines reaching out from Taiwan's coast into the Pacific and the Strait. Their starting points are not spread out — they crowd into a handful of "landfall" spots around the island.

Those landfalls are the landing stations. To understand Taiwan's cable fragility, first understand this physical geography.

A Cable Is Not an Abstract Line but a Physical Facility

We tend to picture a submarine cable as a line on a map, but it is infrastructure with a very concrete physical geography: deep-sea cable is laid all the way from the open sea to the shore, makes landfall at specific points, enters a landing station, and is then carried by terrestrial backhaul to a city's network hubs and data centers (IDCs).

For Taiwan, this geography is highly concentrated — and concentration is precisely where the risk lies.

The Four Landing Stations

Taiwan's international cables land mainly at four stations:

North · Toucheng (Yilan)
The main gateway facing the Pacific
On the northeast corner, the landfall for many Pacific-facing international cables toward the US, Japan, and Southeast Asia, carrying heavy US- and Japan-bound traffic.
North · Tamsui (New Taipei)
A veteran station, including cross-strait cable
One of the oldest landing stations, and the landfall for cables such as the Tamsui–Fuzhou (TSE) system.
North · Bali (New Taipei)
Northern Taiwan's other landfall
Together with Tamsui and Toucheng, it forms the northern cluster of international cable landings, sharing the north's external traffic.
South · Fangshan (Pingtung)
The south's gateway toward Southeast Asia
The main southern station, the landfall for many cables toward Southeast and South Asia, splitting traffic north–south with the northern cluster.
Why "Concentration" Is the RiskFour landing stations carry the overwhelming majority of international traffic. Landing stations, landfall segments, and shallow water are the most fragile and the most easily located parts of a cable — putting the eggs in a few baskets means a gray-zone threat only has to target a few key segments to amplify its impact.

Taiwan's Cables in Numbers

14Int'l cable systems, main island (approx.)
12Int'l cables landing on the main island (approx.)
10Domestic / outer-island cables (approx.)
4Main landing stations

Cross-Strait Cables: Kinmen–Xiamen and Tamsui–Fuzhou

Beyond the international cables facing the Pacific and Southeast Asia, a few geopolitically sensitive cross-strait cables run near Taiwan:

Kinmen–Xiamen · ~21 km
Kinmen ↔ Xiamen
A short cable linking Kinmen to Xiamen in China — extremely short, reflecting Kinmen's peculiar situation of being geographically and telecommunications-wise "closer to China than to Taiwan's main island."
Tamsui–Fuzhou (TSE) · ~260 km
Tamsui ↔ Fuzhou
A cable system connecting Tamsui in Taiwan to Fuzhou in China, about 260 km long — one of the historical cross-strait communication links.

The Most Fragile Link: Outer-Island Redundancy

The main island has a dozen-plus international cables that can back each other up, but the outer islands are in a very different situation.

  • Matsu: relies on just 2 cables to the main island. In February 2023 both were cut within 6 days, affecting ~14,000 residents' internet for nearly 50 days.
  • Kinmen: only 1 cable plus 1 backup — extremely low redundancy.
  • Hard to repair: only ~60 specialized cable-repair ships worldwide, often queued; an outer-island break typically waits 1 to 1.5 months.

Outer-island fragility is not just a livelihood issue but a national-security one: when an island's external connectivity can be "cut with one stroke" via a few cables, it becomes the cheapest pressure point for gray-zone coercion. That is why, although the main island is more resilient, the two structural weaknesses — landing-station concentration and thin outer-island redundancy — must be taken seriously. The next article, The Global Submarine Cable Industry, pulls the lens back to place Taiwan's situation on the global cable map.

FAQ

What are Taiwan's cable landing stations?
Taiwan's international cables land mainly at four stations: Toucheng, Tamsui, and Bali in the north, and Fangshan in the south. After landfall, cables are carried by terrestrial backhaul to network hubs and data centers in places like Taipei and Neihu. The heavy concentration of landing stations is one of Taiwan's structural cable-resilience weaknesses.
How many submarine cables does Taiwan have?
Taiwan's main island has about 14 international submarine cable systems plus roughly 10 domestic cables (connecting outer islands such as Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu). About 12 international cable systems land on the main island across the four stations of Toucheng, Tamsui, Bali, and Fangshan. The outer islands have very few cables and are the most fragile link.
What are the Kinmen–Xiamen and Tamsui–Fuzhou cables?
The Kinmen–Xiamen cable is a short cable (~21 km) linking Kinmen to Xiamen in China, reflecting Kinmen's peculiar geographic and communications situation. The Tamsui–Fuzhou cable (TSE) is a system about 260 km long. These cross-strait cables are geopolitically sensitive.
Why is outer-island cable redundancy especially fragile?
Outer islands such as Matsu rely on just 2 cables to the main island, and Kinmen has only 1 plus 1 backup. If those few cables are damaged together, an entire island can be cut off for weeks — in February 2023 Matsu's two cables were cut within 6 days and ~14,000 residents' internet was affected for nearly 50 days. The main island has more redundancy, but landing-station concentration remains a concern.
← 03 Enforcement Next: The Global Cable Industry →

Sources

The concepts on this page can be verified against these public, authoritative sources:

The landing stations, ~12 landing systems, and cross-strait cable overview draw on Vincent Chen-WS, "Overview of Taiwan's Submarine Cables and Backup Mechanisms" (Medium, 2018) and public cable-map data; outer-island incident figures are from public news reporting.

This page is for research and education; figures aggregate public data, and cable counts and lengths can change as systems are built or retired. See the methodology.

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