Chinese military balloons have been entering Taiwan’s airspace “very frequently” for years, according to a Financial Times report.
“They come very frequently, the last one just a few weeks ago,” one Taiwanese official said.
Another official said the balloons are floating over Taiwan on average once per month. Taiwan has detected “dozens” of China’s balloons in recent years, FT reported.
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The alarming admission comes as tensions mount around the world over China’s sweeping global aerial surveillance program, which U.S. officials say has targeted over 40 countries across five continents. For Taiwan, the slew of balloons coincides with growing suspicions that Chinese President Xi Jinping will attack Taiwan in the next several years. China has plans to be prepared to invade Taiwan by 2027, the Director of the CIA warned early this month.
“Our assessment at CIA is that I wouldn't underestimate President Xi's ambitions with regard to Taiwan,” CIA Director Bill Burns said.
Taiwanese officials previously acknowledged that China had launched at least four batches of balloons over Taiwan in February and March 2022, but the latest numbers suggest that China’s surveillance program against Taiwan is much more aggressive than was previously known.
The Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States and the American Institute in Taiwan did not immediately return requests for comment.
Concerns have mounted about the United States government’s ability to detect and protect against surveillance balloons and other potential airborne threats in recent days. Ever since the U.S. Department of Defense acknowledged a Chinese spy balloon was flying over the United States earlier this month and shot it down, the Biden administration has shot down three additional unidentified “objects” in North America, including in Canada, near Alaska, and over Lake Huron.
Although the U.S. Department of Defense is shooting down the objects, the U.S. military doesn’t know exactly what the objects are, U.S. officials confirmed this week. The Pentagon is still assessing how they move and what their purpose is, the NORAD and NORTHCOM commander, Gen. Glen VanHerck, said during a call Sunday. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has suggested at least a few of the objects are balloons.
Efforts to recover fallen debris this week are ongoing.
Some clues have emerged about the objects’ possible capabilities. On Sunday, the U.S. Air Force and National Guard shot down an “object” over Lake Huron over concerns the Pentagon had about its “potential surveillance capabilities.”
Some Taiwanese officials have suggested that the balloons that have hovered over Taiwan’s airspace are meteorological in nature, but that they are collecting atmospheric data to help inform radar and missile systems. China’s People's Liberation Army (PLA) is behind the launches, several officials told FT.
White House National Security Council coordinator John Kirby told reporters Monday that the United States assesses that China's balloon program is connected to the PLA.
China claimed that the balloon launched over the United States was a meteorological and civilian balloon, but Biden administration officials have maintained that it was a spy balloon.
Beijing has since accused the United States of also launching spy balloons over China in recent months. The White House National Security Council denied the accusations Monday.
“This is the latest example of China scrambling to do damage control,” Adrienne Watson, the National Security Council spokesperson, said Monday. “It has repeatedly and wrongly claimed the surveillance balloon it sent over the U.S. was a weather balloon and has failed to offer any credible explanations for its intrusion into our airspace, airspace of others.”
It was not immediately clear if the balloons observed over Taiwan are unique to Taiwan. But China’s surveillance balloon program spans the globe, according to U.S. officials. The commander of U.S. Air Forces Central, Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich told reporters Monday that the U.S. military has detected Chinese balloons in the Middle East as well. China acknowledged one of its balloons has floated over Latin America in recent days, although the government claimed its purpose was civilian and linked to flight tests.
The U.S. military is working to deter China from taking next steps as concerns grow that Beijing may be gearing up to invade Taiwan, U.S. officials told lawmakers in a briefing on Capitol Hill last week.
There is still a chance that China may not invade Taiwan this decade, Ely Ratner, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, said in the briefing. China may be second-guessing some of its plans to attack Taiwan given how poorly Russia’s armed forces have performed in the war in Ukraine in the last year, the CIA director suggested earlier this month.
Even so, China is growing increasingly aggressive in the region, according to the Pentagon.
“In recent years, the PRC has increasingly turned to the PLA as an instrument of coercive statecraft in support of its global ambitions, including by conducting more dangerous coercive and aggressive actions in the Indo-Pacific region,” Ratner said.
China’s PLA has already launched aircraft into Taiwan’s southwest air defense identification zone (ADIZ) this week, according to a brief from the Ministry of National Defense in Taiwan on Monday.
Taiwan’s army has been conducting drills in recent weeks to demonstrate its capability to repel an invasion to prepare for China’s threats.
“We prepare for any kind of threat,” said Maj. Gen Yu-Chin “Eugene” Lee, the commander of the troops in training. “No one wants to go to war.”
