China’s balloons give Japan and Taiwan a reason to share intelligence, says lawmaker

Influential lawmaker Itsunori Onodera said one way that Japan could share information with Taiwan could be through the US. ST FILE PHOTO

TOKYO – The flight of suspected Chinese surveillance balloons has shown that Japan and Taiwan need to share “critical” intelligence about possible aerial threats, a senior defence policymaker for Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) said.

Although Japan does not have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, it worries that China could imperil Japanese security if it were to gain control over the self-governed island.

“We don’t have those bilateral relations with Taiwan, so we don’t cooperate on that, but Japan’s government will have to consider what it does next,” Mr Itsunori Onodera, a former defence minister and an influential lawmaker in the ruling party, said in an interview.

One way that Japan could share information with Taiwan could be through its close ally, the United States, Mr Onodera said, adding that he had visited Taiwan in January and was briefed about threats posed to the island by China.

Japan said on Tuesday that it suspected Chinese spy balloons had flown over Japan at least three times, most recently in 2021.

Japan did not intercept any of them, but on Thursday, Defence Ministry officials briefed Mr Onodera and other LDP lawmakers about a planned change in military engagement rules to allow Japan’s air force to shoot down unmanned aircraft, including balloons that could endanger other air traffic or people on the ground.

“The rules now cover manned aircraft or military aircraft. The change will add unmanned aircraft to those,” Mr Minoru Kihara, one of the lawmakers, told reporters after the briefing.

Japan’s Self-Defence Forces will begin training pilots to engage those targets, he said.

Japan on Wednesday said it had warned China that violations of its airspace by surveillance balloons were unacceptable.

The issue of spy balloons has drawn new attention in recent days after US fighter jets shot down a Chinese balloon on Feb 4, and three other objects subsequently.

China said the balloon was a civilian weather-monitoring aircraft. It also accused the US of sending its balloons into Chinese airspace. REUTERS

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