Amid fears of Chinese sabotage of Taiwan's undersea internet cables, the Taiwanese civil defense group Ganghu has begun training amateur radio operators to communicate even in the event of an internet outage. This information was reported by Deutsche Welle on its English-language website.
Taiwan currently relies on more than 25 international and domestic communication cables to carry over 90% of its internet traffic. Without these cables, the island could be cut off from the outside world, and internal communications would likely collapse. According to a 2025 report by Taiwan's National Security Office, these "digital lifelines" are damaged an average of seven to eight times a year. The Taiwanese civil defense group Ganghu has therefore begun training the population to communicate via amateur radio in the event of an internet outage. Ganghu and its members cover an area of approximately 54 square kilometers and have a population of around 390,000. This roughly corresponds to the size of the city of Herne and the population of Bochum. The German Amateur Radio Club (DARC) describes a similar approach to Ganghu's with its concept of "local emergency radio," in which members are expected to support each other and their neighbors in the event of a disaster. Given the tense atmosphere in Taiwan, this training aims to mitigate the consequences of these latent dangers.
Although amateur radio has existed worldwide for about a hundred years, it is only fifty years old in Taiwan. Under the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), whose leaders took refuge on the island after their defeat by Mao Zedong's Communist Party in the 1949 Chinese Civil War, civilian use of amateur radio was virtually prohibited. The government feared spies operating from the mainland. The first amateur radio license exams in Taiwan were not held until 1984. Today, as the threat of conflict between Taiwan and China once again makes headlines, there are approximately 25,000 licensed amateur radio operators in Taiwan, according to the National Communications Commission. Taiwan's population is around 24.3 million, representing about 0.11% of the total population. By comparison, Germany has a population of approximately 83.5 million and about 61,000 amateur radio operators, representing only 0.073% of the population.
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