Yi Peng 3 crossed both cables C-Lion 1 and BSC at times matching when they broke

So what would China's motivation be here?

Helping Russia

So what's the strategic importance of this move? inb4 "they're just acting like hoodlums to show off their strength".

Keeping Europe on edge and cowed, so that they spend less time and effort on Ukraine. This allows Russia to capture more of the historic Russian Empire in the east, which makes them more powerful and embarrasses the Western countries, pushing more unaligned countries into BRICS.

The endgame here is to build a new world order with Russia and China calling the shots (actually, China calling the shots, but we're not supposed to say that yet).

Might be just a crew paid off by Russians to do it.

In my country saboteurs largely weren't Russian - it's easier to pay off a local than have ano5 Russian cross the border, when his predecessor gets caught.

This seems very unrealistic, as the resulting distraction is probably of low consequence concerning Ukraine.

Not even replying to the claims about world domination, I don't have time for these... "suppositions".

Finding out how far they can go without consequences / test the will of another nation to do something?

Article indicates this isn’t the first time.

China has a lot of interest in the war not ending one way or the other. Their peer competitors are spending resources on it and a potentially problematic regional competitor is becoming more irrelevant the longer it runs.

Yes, and that's half the problem. The only ones taking this seriously are the Latvians, Estonians, and Lithuanians (although the Finns and Poles finally woke up to it last year - also why Poland upped its military spending to 5%). The Estonian military reports are particularly enlightening, and Timothy Snyder offers background into the why.

China likely has nothing to do with this. It is unlikely they have any participation or even knowledge of this. Twice now some Russians in a China flagged ship caused trouble, and the China-flagging seems very intentional.

Russia is desperately trying to make the China-Russia thing a reality, and is probably trying to drag them in against their great resistance. China has zero credible reason to be dragged into Russia's nonsense, and a billion reasons why they want nothing to do with it.

The ideal outcome of this is that China realizes that Russia is outright trying to drag them into conflict, and that they repudiate that country entirely.

Europe spent half the previous century ravaged by two world wars stemming in part from suppositions, paranoia and alliance networks. Never forget that.

China has already been involved quietly, funneling weapons and intel to the Russians, essentially playing the opposite role to the US. Make no mistake - this war has a component of the US and China probing each others' capabilities.

The Russians could have done this with a fishing trawler (they cut cables accidentally all the time), so like you I doubt we can infer some nefarious Chinese plot from the flag on the vessel.

Dude, Chinese state TV still calls Russia a "gas station with nukes." Of course they make money off of it and uphold their agreements but so far China has avoided any direct involvement with Russia's bs.

In the superpower listings they're Number 2 with a bullet.

Also to the point, Burkina Faso with nukes.

"Chinese-flagged" does not equal "Chinese operated"

I'd say another reasonable view is that China is happy to put morality aside and make money off weapons sales so long as they can get away with it.

> although the Finns and Poles finally woke up to it last year - also why Poland upped its military spending to 5%

Poland has been warning about Russia at least for over 14 years now, since before Crimea annexation for sure. It started with Russia invading Georgia, I think.

Likewise, Poland has also been meeting NATO spending quota for years, upping it even more these days.

Poland refused to let another gas pipe from Russia through its territory without it going through Ukraine too, because it was obvious Russia would use it as leverage against Ukraine. This is what actually led to NS project which, for the same reason and this time additionaly because of the risk of creating leverage against other CEE countries, Poland refused to participate in and had been instead alarming that NS will result in troubles with Russia and security of Europe and Ukraine in particular.

Poland has been raising the issue of not only Ukrainian, but Georgian situation too. Many people forget, that Russia has been occupying parts of Georgia for over 16 years now.

Poland, despite paying penalties for that and being called racist etc., has been also blocking illegal immigration influx on its border with Belarus due to it being a hybrid war of Russia against Europe.

If anything, Poland did not sleep over Russia's plans. Quite the opposite, actually.

Yes, sorry, I didn't mean to imply that Poland has been asleep at the wheel. They have indeed been warning about Russia's intentions, although using the Western manner of speaking that accomplishes nothing (not that I blame them - there is little they can do to move the European political center, and getting too shrill would backfire). But no one has been warning as loudly about it as Estonia. Unfortunately, nobody listens to the Baltic countries, or even hears a word they say.