U.S. wants undersea data cable to skip Hong Kong

Overseas cables cannot be tapped, they cannot be cut and spliced and all is encoded. The US can tap into Internets abroad and listen in, but not into the backbone. This runs too much and uses fibre differently to the way it is done in the US. But the Chinese have skills, and they can operate and configure these nets. The USA elected in 1992 not to use this technology. The bill was sanctioned by Bill Clinton, president at the time.

100% right.

Hong Kong is now effectively China.

China operates the Great Firewall which controls access in/out of their "Country"

Why place China into a difficult position over future outages which may lead to suspicion that they caused them due to ... manipulation. So, it's a lot simpler to by-pass HK altogether. However, Taiwan may not be the best of Hubs to select... perhaps Hawaii / Guam, or even Japan ?

Why do that? Just gives China an attack platform. Connect democracies only. It's a port to the USA so the USA has a right to stop connections to it. If the line was say between Japan and HongKong, then the USA doesn't have a say, but here it does

It makes absolutely no sense to have a critical piece of hardware that will become part of your communications strategy between Allies, go through an unfriendly nation.

Sadly, now more than ever, HK is part of China, and therefore falls into that "Unfriendly" Category.

Another point to consider, is the security of that hardware. It it were to go to HK, then an accident could occur that prevents its use. Who would be able to investigate ? (I mean, look at the trouble we've had recently with getting a straight answer from China, or even access to samples of the new virus).