Philippines says it is exploring closer work with Taiwan to protect undersea cables

The Philippines is looking at closer cooperation with Taiwan on protecting undersea cables and dealing with grey-zone pressure at sea, even though Manila follows a one-China policy, a senior Philippine diplomat said in Washington on Wednesday, 21 October, according to Reuters.

Felipe F. Carino III, the deputy chief of mission at the Philippine embassy in Washington, told a seminar at the Center for a New American Security that a pragmatic and practical approach toward Taiwan was needed to protect the two sides' shared interests in the Bashi Channel, the waterway that separates southern Taiwan from the northern Philippines. He linked cable security to tensions in the South China Sea, but he did not mention China by name.

Carino said undersea cables carry nearly all intercontinental data traffic, and he put the share of cyber incidents that occur in the region at between 60 and 67 percent. In his account, Manila and Taipei are exploring forms of cooperation that include knowledge sharing and capacity building, and he said he expected that work to help address grey-zone problems in the area. He stressed that this was happening notwithstanding the one-China policy, under which the Philippines recognises Beijing rather than Taipei.

Asked whether the cooperation could extend to joint patrols, or to holding ships responsible when they disrupt communications links, Carino said he did not have details. He described the arrangement as constantly evolving and suggested that some of those ideas might eventually come to fruition. No agreement, timetable or specific project was announced at the event.

Andrea Yang, Taiwan's deputy representative in Washington, spoke at the same seminar. She pointed to the jailing in Taiwan of a Chinese ship captain over damage to an undersea cable, and said Taiwan would devote more resources to developing unmanned systems to improve its maritime surveillance. She also argued that interference with undersea cables is a matter the United Nations should take up, and that the body should consider mechanisms to prevent such conduct.

The case Yang referred to was decided in June 2025, when the Tainan District Court sentenced the Chinese captain of a Togolese-registered freighter to three years in prison for intentionally damaging a cable linking Taiwan's main island with Penghu. The cable had been severed in February of that year.

Concern about cables in the waters between Taiwan and the Philippines has grown this month. Reuters noted that the Philippine coast guard said earlier in October that it had sent its largest vessel and an aircraft to challenge a Chinese research ship operating off the northern province of Batanes, near undersea cable corridors. Taipei has also stepped up its own efforts to protect the communications links after several incidents involving cables and China-linked vessels, the agency reported.

Practical maritime ties between the two sides were already growing. On 20 October, Taiwan's Ocean Affairs Council minister Kuan Bi-ling told legislators that a retired Taiwanese coast guard patrol vessel, transferred to the Philippine Coast Guard through a Philippine non-profit group and now in service as BRP Sarangani, may not be used to enforce laws against Taiwanese fishers. She said Taiwan's coast guard has stationed a liaison officer at its representative office in Manila and that the two sides run mechanisms for fisheries enforcement cooperation and emergency notification.

Carino's remarks are an unusually open statement from a Philippine official that Manila is prepared to work with Taipei on security in the strait between them, a route that carries many of the cables linking both to the wider world. The comments were made at a think-tank event rather than in a formal government announcement, and neither side set out what shape the cooperation would take.