According to the latest news, China will establish two submarine cable maintenance bases in the East china sea and the south China Sea as part of strengthening its digital infrastructure.
Maintaining submarine cables is important to ensure the transmission of internet data / Source: Shutterstock
Under the government's Five-Year Plan for the Information and Communications Industry, China is also seeking to build two more submarine cable maintenance specialist vessels in the next five years to build an internationally competitive submarine cable construction and maintenance capability.
In addition, China is planning to draft submarine cables to connect with the northern United States and Europe. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said last month that total investment in digital infrastructure reached 3.7 trillion yuan ($570 billion) between 2021 and 2025, an increase of 1.2 trillion yuan over the previous five years.
Image source: Shutterstock
On Wednesday, the Hainan government announced that the South China Sea submarine cable base would start construction in Sanya by the end of the year. Under the province's five-year plan for digital infrastructure, the base will be able to secure submarine cables in the South China Sea, both offshore and offshore, once it begins operations in 2023.
According to telecom research firm TeleGeography, 436 active fiber optic lines have been laid on the seabed between land-based base stations around the world, carrying 95 percent of all kinds of data transmissions in various countries, making them vital to the economic and security interests of most countries. Three state-owned telecommunications companies, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, all own stakes in the 31 new cables deployed this year.
Sherman, a researcher at the Atlantic Council's Cyber Governance Program, said that as in any country, Chinese citizens, government agencies and businesses rely on submarine cables to transmit Internet data, which makes it important to repair and maintain these cables. In addition, since submarine cables are not only vulnerable to natural disasters and armed conflicts, but also to human manipulation such as espionage, improving the maintenance and repair capabilities of submarine cables can also ensure their safety.
Chinese companies are among the biggest players in the physical infrastructure of the Internet. According to the Federal Communications Commission, Huawei has built or repaired about a quarter of the world's submarine cables at sea, and its growing influence has come under the radar of the United States, which has struggled to limit the use of Chinese-built internet infrastructure.