Chinese spy balloons also spotted over Japan, Taiwan: report
Chinese spy balloons have been tracked over Japan and Taiwan after similar aircraft traversed the US earlier this year, according to a new report.
Photos have captured apparent Chinese crafts passing over northern Japan and Taiwan’s capital Taipei in recent years, the BBC’s “Panorama” program reported Monday.
The UK outlet partnered with Wisconsin-based artificial intelligence company Synthetaic to produce new images to document that the China balloons “had been not just a one-off, but a continuing effort dating back at least five years,” according to former CIA East Asia analyst John Culver.
The US shot down one balloon off the coast of South Carolina this past February, but not before it reportedly collected valuable intelligence from military sites.
The Japanese government has said it is prepared to execute similar shootdowns following a change in Tokyo’s self-defense policy.
“The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two boxcars full of spy equipment in it is he didn’t know it was there,” President Biden said last week at a campaign fundraiser in California. “No, I’m serious. That’s what’s a great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened.”
Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning responded by telling reporters the balloon’s flight “was entirely an accidental event” and called Biden’s characterization of President Xi Jinping “utterly absurd and irresponsible.”
The balloon rose nearly 200 feet in height, and the US took 12 days to collect scattered debris from it after it was downed.
Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada in February revealed that Tokyo had also detected suspicious flying objects in June 2020 and September 2021.
Synthetaic CEO Corey Jaskolski told the BBC evidence suggested the latter object was a craft launched from deep inside China.
A similar balloon-like vehicle was also seen alongside surveillance aircraft in January 2022 near Japan’s Kyushu islands, which Beijing illegally asserts are China’s.
Meanwhile, a Taiwanese weather service snapped pictures of a balloon crossing over Taipei in September 2021.
Taiwan’s government denied it was an intelligence-gathering aircraft, but Jaskolski told the BBC the balloon’s diameter and altitude was similar to the ones that flew over the US and Japan.
Japan remains a close ally of the US, and though Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently affirmed the State Department “does not support Taiwan independence,” the agency considers the island nation as “a key US partner in the Indo-Pacific.”
Biden has also said the US military would respond to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
The Pentagon referred The Post “to Japan and Taiwan to speak to the status of objects flying over their airspace.”
