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. Positioned at the mouth of Bohai Bay, the city's coastal geography makes it a natural site for submarine cable infrastructure. One submarine cable lands at Dalian, connecting the city into China's broader undersea network.

The single cable serving Dalian is the Dalian-Yantai Cable, an intra-national link that runs across the Bohai Sea to Yantai on the Shandong Peninsula. This connection represents a regional, domestic corridor rather than an intercontinental route, linking two major port cities on opposite shores of the same body of water.

Cables Landing at Dalian

The Dalian-Yantai Cable is the sole submarine cable landing at Dalian. Spanning approximately 146 kilometres, this cable achieved ready-for-service status in 1998 and carries a draft status designation. Both of its endpoints are located within China — Dalian on the Liaodong Peninsula and Yantai on the Shandong Peninsula — making it an entirely domestic submarine cable crossing the Bohai Sea.

Regional Context

Within China's submarine cable landscape, Dalian ranks among the more modestly connected landing points. China hosts 24 submarine cables across 24 landing points, and Dalian, with its single cable, places in the top 63 percent of Chinese landing points by cable count. By comparison, landing points such as Chung Hom Kok and Tseung Kwan O each host six cables, while Chongming and Nanhui each serve four, and Shantou serves three — all representing considerably denser connectivity than Dalian. Lantau Island, also with two cables, similarly outpaces Dalian in terms of cable count.

Network Role

Dalian functions as a single-cable terminus rather than a multi-cable hub. The Dalian-Yantai Cable establishes a direct undersea link between northeastern China and the Shandong Peninsula, providing a cross-Bohai Sea route that complements the overland and coastal connections available between these two regions. The cable's domestic scope means Dalian's submarine connectivity is oriented entirely toward intra-national communication rather than international traffic.

Within the broader Chinese submarine cable graph, Dalian represents one of the country's more peripheral landing points, serving a specific regional corridor established in the late 1990s. Its presence in China's submarine cable network illustrates how undersea cables serve not only international purposes but also domestic connectivity across bodies of water where direct overland routing is impractical.