Alibaba Cloud has disconnected Taiwan from its private network, preventing users in the country from connecting its cloud services.

“Dear customers of Alibaba Cloud Cloud Enterprise Network (“CEN”), due to Alibaba Cloud's business adjustment, Alibaba Cloud will cease the operation of China (Taiwan) region for CEN starting from June 30, 2022,” the company said in a short statement.

CEN is a network built on Alibaba's global private network that customers can use to send data and connect to other regions & facilities. It can be used to facilitate communication between different virtual private clouds (VPC) in different locations as well as to on-premise data centers.

The Chinese cloud company, also known as Aliyun, said that customers in Taiwan can no longer use CEN to establish network communication to other regions and will be disconnected from other networks, including those deployed outside Taiwan.

To mitigate the impact, Alibaba recommended that customers migrate services from Taiwan to an available region nearby.

Alibaba claims to have more than 2,300 network nodes in China, and another 500 internationally. It operates 27 regions and 84 Availability Zones globally.

Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), has been independent of mainland China since the Chinese Communist Party ousted Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist government in 1949. The People's Republic of China (PRC) operates under its One China Policy and sees Taiwan as part of its territory; some within the ROC would also like reunification, but not under communist rule.

Tensions in the South China Sea have been increasing as China looks to increase its influence in the area. National security concerns in the US have been raised over the potential danger of China invading Taiwan and taking over the world’s foremost chip manufacturing hub.