Dalian, China

Dalian, China: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Dalian is a major port city situated on the southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsula in Liaoning province, northeastern China. Its coastal position, facing the Yellow Sea and the Bohai Sea, makes it a natural site for submarine cable infrastructure in the region. One submarine cable lands at Dalian, connecting it directly to another point on the Chinese mainland.

The single cable serving Dalian is a domestic link, running across the waters between the Liaodong Peninsula and the Shandong Peninsula. Rather than providing intercontinental connectivity, this cable enables intra-national communication across the sea corridor that separates two significant stretches of China's eastern coastline.

Cables Landing at Dalian

The Dalian-Yantai Cable is the sole submarine cable landing at Dalian. Spanning approximately 146 kilometres, it reached ready-for-service status in 1998 and holds draft status in the record. The cable connects Dalian in Liaoning province to Yantai on the Shandong Peninsula — both located in China — crossing the sea gap between the two peninsulas that border the Bohai Sea. As a domestic cable, it links two of northeastern and eastern China's prominent coastal cities without extending to any foreign territory.

Regional Context

Within China's submarine cable network of 24 landing points, Dalian hosts one cable, placing it in the lower tier of landing points by cable count. By comparison, peers such as Chung Hom Kok and Tseung Kwan O each host six cables, while Chongming and Nanhui each host four, and even Shantou serves three cables. Dalian's profile is closer to that of Lantau Island, which hosts two cables, reflecting its role as a more specialised domestic terminus rather than a multi-cable international hub.

Network Role

Dalian functions as a single-cable domestic terminus within China's submarine cable infrastructure. The Dalian-Yantai Cable it hosts provides a direct undersea path between the Liaodong and Shandong peninsulas, complementing overland connectivity across a stretch of sea that otherwise separates these two coastal regions of northern China. The cable, commissioned in 1998, represents one of the earlier entries in China's submarine cable history, which began in 1997.

As a one-cable landing point in a national network that averages considerably longer international routes — with an average cable length across China of over 10,000 kilometres — Dalian occupies a distinct niche: a shorter-range, domestically oriented node. Its presence in the broader Chinese submarine cable graph illustrates how the network serves not only international traffic but also point-to-point connectivity between major coastal cities within the country's own maritime geography.