China has been suspected of deliberately snapping undersea cables on at least two occasions in the past two years—a charge that it has consistently denied. However, in a rather uncanny development, a Chinese scientific body has now publicly unveiled a device that could be used to sever undersea cables.
China recently demonstrated a small, deep-sea cable-cutting gadget that can cut the most robust underwater power or communication lines in the world, posing a massive threat to global underwater security, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported. This is the first time that a country has publicly unveiled such a device.
The device has been created by the China Ship Scientific Research Centre (CSSRC) and its affiliated State Key Laboratory of Deep-sea Manned Vehicles and reportedly targets armored cables. The team of scientists, led by engineer Hu Haolong, that developed the device maintains that it has been designed as a tool for seabed mining and civilian salvage.
However, the equipment’s dual-use capabilities may raise concerns for other countries, especially in light of recent events involving a rising number of undersea cable-snapping incidents. The device can be used to cut armored cables that support 95% of the world’s data transmission. These cables are coated with polymer, rubber, and steel sheaths to make them resilient.
As the news of this latest device went viral, several netizens pointed out China’s hypocrisy in denying its role or intention regarding sub-sea cable snapping while unveiling a device that could make that task much easier. Some users on X also made memes, stating that Beijing is now making no bones of the fact that it is a threat to undersea cables.
According to the report, the device developed by the Chinese research team can cut cables up to 4,000 meters (13,123 feet) below the surface, which is twice the maximum operational range of current subsea communication infrastructure.
In peer-reviewed research published in the Chinese-language journal Mechanical Engineer on February 24, the team led by engineer Hu Haolong claimed that the cutting tool’s design had overcome several difficult technological difficulties originating from the depth at which these devices are meant to operate.
For one, the water pressure surpasses 400 atmospheres at 4,000 meters. The team claims that even with prolonged operation at that depth, the device will not implode, thanks to its titanium alloy exterior and oil-compensated seals.
Second, steel-reinforced cables cannot be cut with conventional blades. So, to address that shortcoming, Hu and his colleagues developed a 150mm (six-inch) diamond-coated grinding wheel that rotates at 1,600 revolutions per minute (rpm), producing sufficient force to break steel while causing the least amount of disruption to marine sediment.
Further, the report states, “Mounted on submersibles with constrained power budgets, the tool’s one-kilowatt motor and 8:1 gear reducer balance torque (six Newton-metres) with efficiency, though prolonged cuts risk overheating.”
The device has been designed to operate with advanced positioning technology to prevent misalignment and could be operated by robotic arms in near-complete darkness.
The revelation comes amid an expansion in China’s undersea capabilities, including the development of manned and unmanned submersibles. This new device is specifically designed to integrate with China’s Fendouzhe or Striver and the Haidou series of submersibles.
This has given rise to concerns that China could use the device to sever the undersea cables in the event of war with the United States in the Indo-Pacific region. Amid rising tensions in the region, analysts and military pundits have flagged a war between the two superpowers as a very real possibility. Moreover, Beijing could choose to cut undersea telecom communication cables in the Taiwan Strait in case it decides to invade the self-ruled island state.
Going a step ahead, the SCMP report contends that China could weaponize these cable cutters to snap undersea communication lines in sites like Guam, a very strategic US territory in the Pacific. Guam is home to a key US port and air force base and is believed to be used as a launchpad in the event of a US-China conflict.
Undersea cables play a vital role in global communications and energy transmission. They form the backbone of the internet and support the flow of electricity between countries and continents. When disrupted, they have the potential to disrupt economies and be a part of a larger hybrid warfare.
Carnegie Endowment, a US-based non-partisan think tank, writes in an article: “Even a modest disruption in internet connectivity that would be a minor nuisance to the general public could have drastic consequences for European and global financial markets, which rely on rapid information flows to optimally perform.
“Europeans have begun to recognize that damage to subsea data cables in their immediate vicinity could be part of a broader toolkit of hybrid aggression directed against them, in which single events do not amount to acts of war and attribution can be remarkably difficult.”
Though the concerns surrounding China’s potential role in such sabotage are based on mere predictions, they come in the wake of several instances of undersea sabotage allegedly committed by Russia against the backdrop of the Ukraine War and amid international sanctions imposed on it by the West.
China’s Role In Undersea Sabotage
China has also been accused of several of these sabotage incidents in its neighborhood and overseas.
Taiwan has repeatedly accused Beijing’s ships of deliberately cutting undersea cables. For instance, in early January 2025, Taiwan’s coast guard said it suspected a Chinese-owned freighter of severing a critical undersea telecom cable off the island’s northern coast, as previously reported in detail by the EurAsian Times.
A similar incident was reported again in February 2025. At the time, Taiwan’s coast guard detained a cargo ship and its Chinese crew to investigate their alleged role in disconnecting a cable from Chunghwa Telecom that connected Taiwan to the Penghu Islands. The Coast Guard later said in a statement that eight Chinese crew members were on board the Togo-flagged ship that was accused of causing damage to the cable.
China has been under the scanner for attempting to sabotage undersea cables since 2023. It was first implicated in October 2023 when its ship, the New Polar Bear, broke the 77-kilometer Balticconnector pipeline, a vital energy supply for Finland. Following the incident, the New Polar Bear sailed to St. Petersburg and was later photographed in the Arkhangelsk region of Russia, eventually docking in Tianjin, China.
China first denied European claims that the New Polar Bear was to blame. However, in August 2024, it admitted that the damage was indeed caused by the ship flying the Hong Kong flag, attributing the incident to a strong storm.
Later, in November 2024, two fiber-optic cables between Finland and Germany and Sweden and Lithuania were severed, with suspicions of a possible Chinese role as the Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 sailed over those cables around that time.
The investigations into the sabotage focused on determining a potential Chinese role, which led to a month-long stand-off between the two sides. It ended only when China allowed representatives from Germany, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark to board the ship along with Chinese investigators in December 2024.
When the incident took place in November, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis posted on X: “If I had a nickel for every time a Chinese ship was dragging its anchor on the bottom of the Baltic Sea in the vicinity of important cables, I would have two nickels, which isn’t much, but it’s weird that it happened twice.”
In addition to Russia, European states have become more suspicious of the Chinese role in undersea cable sabotage attempts. Some analysts have even suggested that Beijing may be aiding Russia in carrying out these activities to assess the West’s resilience against these attacks.
China, on its part, has denied all culpability. In fact, Hu and his team suggest that the device supports marine resource development and has been successfully used in terrestrial studies to cut cables that are 60 mm thick.
However, since China is notorious for employing dual-use technology, concerns are likely to persist.
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