The presence of a Chinese surveillance balloon over the US and the shooting down of it triggered a sensation in January-February 2023. According to a report published by the BBC, Chinese spy balloons have been seen in the skies of Japan and Taiwan, this time. Tokyo has confirmed that such a balloon flew over the territory of Japan in the last week of June 2023. In a statement, the Government of Japan has mentioned that Tokyo is fully prepared to shoot down such balloons in the future. Japan made it clear that it would take all precautionary measures to keep the Chinese balloon threat at bay. However, Beijing has made no comments on this issue so far.

The incident, related to the surveillance balloon, sparked renewed bitterness between China and the US earlier in 2023. At that time, Beijing claimed that the balloon, which flew over the northwest part of the US in late January, was basically a civilian airship meant for research and meteorology. China was using that balloon for conducting scientific research on weather conditions. The Asian giant further claimed that the airship had entered the US territory because of the blowing wind, describing the incident as an accidental and isolated one. Even after the balloon scandal, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited China.

John K Culver, a former analyst (for East Asia) and senior Intelligence Officer of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), told the BBC that China’s balloon activities in Asian skies were not new, as Beijing has been doing such things for the last five years.

Corey Jaskolski, the founder of Artificial Intelligence company Synthetaic, believes that it is a serious issue, as Japan is a major security ally of the US and a number of senior US defence officials are stationed in the Asian nation. The BBC quoted him as saying: “The balloon was highly likely launched from deep inside China, possibly south of Mongolia.”

After conducting joint research, the BBC and Synthetaic have revealed that a similar surveillance balloon was spotted in the sky of Taiwan in September 2021. The Weather Service Department of Taiwan clicked two images, showing a balloon-like figure flying over the Taiwanese capital of Taipei. Another spy balloon was flying off the coast of Taiwan later that month.

Defence experts are of the opinion that China often sends balloons to other countries as part of its global surveillance operation. The Socialist nation has already established Police Stations on foreign soils. Now, it has started using spy balloons in order to boost its covert global surveillance programme. It seems that China uses these balloons mainly to gather intelligence data from major military posts and nuclear sites of enemy nations.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das