TAIPEI, June 27 (SCMP) - Taiwan will shoot down mainland Chinese balloons if they are seen to present a threat, the island’s military has said.
The statement from the Taiwanese defence ministry on Tuesday (Jun 27) came as new reports emerged of Beijing’s “spy balloon” programme in the region, with latest findings by the BBC showing Taiwan and Japan were targeted in East Asia.
The BBC reported “multiple images of balloons crossing East Asia”, following a joint project with artificial intelligence company Synthetaic, which analysed huge amounts of satellite data.
There was evidence of balloons crossing Japan and Taiwan in September 2021, the report said.
Japan has also confirmed that balloons flew over its territory and said it was prepared to shoot them down in future, the report on Monday said.
Announcing a similar strategy at a news conference on Tuesday, Major General Lin Wen-huang, joint operations planning director of Taiwan’s defence ministry, said: “If these balloons are intimidating or risky to Taiwan, we will shoot them down and destroy them to uphold our security.”
Colonel Lo Cheng-yu of the ministry’s intelligence centre said the military had the situation around the Taiwan Strait under effective control and was tracking any movements of high-altitude balloons from mainland China.
“The defence ministry has also maintained first-hand information through the exchange of intelligence with other allies to ensure our overall security,” Lo said.
Beijing, which claims sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan, has intensified cross-strait military drills since then-US House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei in August. It views formal exchanges with the island as a violation of its sovereignty.
The United States, like most countries, does not recognise Taiwan as independent, but is opposed to any change in the status quo by force – an eventuality Beijing has not renounced. The US is also legally bound to help Taiwan defend itself.
In a row that saw bilateral relations hit a new low, the US said in February that an alleged Chinese spy balloon had been spotted in its airspace. China said the device was a “weather balloon” that had drifted off course.
In Taipei, Lo said that so far balloons flying in from the mainland had been mostly “released by meteorological or observatory units” there. These included a balloon whose debris was found in Taiwan’s defence outpost of Dongyin in February.
Asked how many such balloons had been found so far and what action the military had taken if these had indeed been used for spying, Lo declined to give details.
The BBC report quoted Synthetaic founder Corey Jaskolski as saying that a balloon that had crossed over Japan in 2021 was believed to have been launched from deep inside mainland China, south of Mongolia. “The BBC has been unable to confirm this,” the report said.
It also said two photos taken by Taiwan’s weather service appeared to show a balloon over the island in late September 2021. After cross-referencing them with satellite imagery, “within 90 seconds, we found the balloon off the coast of Taiwan”, the BBC quoted Jaskolski as saying.
The head of Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau, Cheng Ming-dean, had posted photos of the inflatable then on his Facebook page. He told local news media in February that the balloon spotted in September 2021 resembled the one seen in US airspace.
He also said a similar balloon was spotted in March last year over Taipei’s Songshan Airport. “They did not match the description of a standard meteorological balloon,” Cheng said, suggesting that they might have been spy balloons.
Already tense US-China relations were rocked by the controversy over the alleged spy balloon, which was later shot down by the US military. It also prompted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone his Beijing trip which was then days away. Only when his visit materialised last week did the two sides show any signs of a thaw.
