A Chinese spy balloon, so-called because it was capable of collecting communications signals according to the US State Department, was shot down by a United States Air Force F-22 fi ghter jet on February 4 over the Atlantic Ocean.
Little is known of the objectives of the Chinese spy balloon program or of the technical capabilities of the balloon’s payload because its debris was lost in the ocean.
China maintains that it was a weather balloon and its destruction was unnecessary and provocative.
In a shocking development, US Congresswoman Young Kim, who serves as Chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Indo-Pacif i c , claimed that India and other countries have been the target of surveillance balloons from China.
Ms Kim, a member of the lower house of the bicameral US Congress and a South Korean by birth, claimed that the surveillance balloon was part of a larger programme by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that has collected information on military assets in Indo-Pacif i c countries such as Taiwan, Japan, India and the Philippines.
A Chinese spy balloon, so-called because it was capable of collecting communications signals according to the US State Department, was shot down by a United States Air Force F-22 fi ghter jet on February 4 over the Atlantic Ocean.
Little is known of the objectives of the Chinese spy balloon program or of the technical capabilities of the balloon’s payload because its debris was lost in the ocean.
China maintains that it was a weather balloon and its destruction was unnecessary and provocative.
In a shocking development, US Congresswoman Young Kim, who serves as Chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Indo-Pacif i c , claimed that India and other countries have been the target of surveillance balloons from China.
Ms Kim, a member of the lower house of the bicameral US Congress and a South Korean by birth, claimed that the surveillance balloon was part of a larger programme by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that has collected information on military assets in Indo-Pacif i c countries such as Taiwan, Japan, India and the Philippines.
“We also know this balloon does not even scratch the surface of the CCP’s surveillance capabilities.
Millions of Americans are spied on every day through Tik Tok and other state-aff i liated applications and technologies,” the US Representative said.
Similar statements have come out of the US State Department in the wake of the balloon incident, raising questions about China’s surveillance program. If Chinese spy balloons, as claimed by sources in the US Government and US Congress, have indeed been deployed to Indo-Pacif i c countries and to India, this too raises several questions.
If such a balloon has been deployed over Indian territory, did it go undetected or did the Government not make news of its existence public?
The balloon incident comes amid rising fears across the world over Communist China’s insidious and often unconventional spying operations. In 2022, Madrid, Spain-based human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders released a report claiming that China had been operating at least 54 clandestine ‘overseas police stations’ in 39 countries to intimidate and suppress expatriate Chinese and dissidents. The Chinese Foreign Ministry insisted that these overseas stations existed only to help Chinese living abroad with bureaucratic work and to fi ght ‘transnational crime’ such as online fraud.
Countries like Germany, the Netherlands and Canada began investigating these alleged overseas police stations following the Safeguard Defenders report.
Even before the spy balloons and the overseas police stations, China had a reputation for conducting intelligence and propaganda operations in other countries. The ubiquitous Confucius Institutes, operated since 2004 by the Chinese Education Ministry with an annual budget of nearly $10 billion, are advertised as cultural and educational institutions.
However, Confucius Institutes have been under fi re for many years for disseminating Chinese government propaganda and censoring topics like the Chinese occupation of Tibet and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. There are currently 530 Confucius Institutes operating on six continents. During a review process initiated in 2022, the Ministry of Education, GoI, notif i ed the University of Mumbai, Vellore Institute of Technology, OP Jindal University, Lovely Professional University, the School of Chinese Language in Kolkata, Bharathiar University and KR Mangalam University to review their association with the Confucius Institutes, their on-campus operations and various Chinese educational exchange programs.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army has also reportedly sent aff i liates and even serving off i cers disguised as researchers to Western universities to steal technology that has military applications, such as supersonic missile and navigation technology. This has led to a crackdown on Chinese ‘students’ in the STEM sector, particularly in America and Australia. In light of what is now known of Chinese intelligence operations, it remains to be seen whether or not a consensus can emerge among the democratic nations of the world over vigilance and prevention of future breaches of national sovereignty.
CHINESE SPY BALLOON OVER INDIA?
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