A Chinese research vessel has been hovering over undersea cables that connect the U.S. with Taiwan and the Philippines, behavior that analysts say is consistent with intelligence gathering operations.

Maritime analysis platform Windward tracked the 200-foot China-flagged vessel "loitering at slow speed" directly over the Pacific Light Cable Network in the Philippine Sea—an 8,000-mile trans-Pacific fiber-optic cable system.

The vessel's presence comes amid continual Chinese pressure on self-ruled Taiwan, one of the U.S.'s top trading partners and the producer of more than 90 percent of the world's most advanced microchips. Beijing claims the island as its territory and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve unification.

Chinese authorities have consistently rejected allegations that Chinese ships intentionally damaged undersea cables and accused Taiwan and some Western governments of jumping to conclusions before investigations had been completed.

Newsweek has contacted Windward and the Chinese and Taiwanese foreign ministries for comment by email.

Signs of Intelligence Gathering

"Slow-speed movement over critical undersea infrastructure is one of the clearest behavioral signals in maritime intelligence," Windward wrote. "Cables don't move. Vessels that hover over them get noticed."

Submarine cables facilitate about 99 percent of intercontinental internet traffic.

Though the ship's name and identifying MMSI were obscured in the report, Windward said the same ship had "operated repeatedly" in the Paracel Islands, which are disputed by China and Vietnam; in the Spratly Islands, home to territorial disputes with U.S. treaty ally the Philippines and several other governments; and as far as the Bay of Bengal and waters off Sri Lanka.

The cable first became a geopolitical flash point in 2020, when U.S. regulators blocked a planned Hong Kong connection over national security concerns that it could expose American data to Chinese intelligence. The project was later reconfigured to link only the U.S., Taiwan and the Philippines.

The Chinese government has long been suspected of relying on civilian research vessels to collect intelligence and conduct surveys in the maritime zones of neighboring countries. Information gathered by these vessels can be shared with the People's Liberation Army upon request because of Beijing's military-civil fusion policy.

China's Increased Pressure on Taiwan

Chinese-flagged vessels have been linked to several cable incidents in recent years, including suspected sabotage in the Baltic Sea and damage to cables around Taiwan.

The presence of a Chinese survey ship over undersea cables comes at a particularly sensitive time for relations between Beijing and Taipei.

In recent years China has stepped up its pressure campaign against Taipei's Beijing-skeptic government, including with near-daily military flights over the median line of the Taiwan Strait and expanded coast guard patrol operations near Taiwan-held Kinmen Islands.

Since June, Beijing has been dispatching coast guard and research vessels into waters east of Taiwan, in what analysts say is a strategy to normalize China's presence in waters long regarded as part of Taiwan's strategic rear.

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Frances Mao and Shakeema Edwards.