Wed, Jan 31, 2024 page3

• China showing displeasure with balloons: US daily

  TREADING LIGHTLY: While the ‘balloons are a big deal,’ Beijing is facing too many problems at home to raise tensions with the US, a think tank researcher said

  • By Liu Tzu-hsuan / Staff reporter
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  China is sending balloons over Taiwan as a warning against the presidential election result and in an effort to weaken the nation’s sovereignty, US daily The Hill reported on Monday.

  Frequently sending balloons over Taiwan is part of China’s increasing effort to “coerce and intimidate” the nation after voters “flouted Beijing’s warning” about Vice President William Lai (賴清德), who won the presidential election on Jan. 13, the paper said.

  Chinese spy balloons flew into Taiwanese airspace almost daily before and after the election, it said.

  

  A small vessel passes in front of a Chinese warship during a military drill near Fuzhou in China’s Fujian Province, near the Matsu Islands, on April 8 last year.

  Photo: Reuters

  Beijing’s actions are a “signal about increased surveillance,” but tensions are unlikely to further escalate, it quoted Kristen Gunness, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, as saying.

  “Balloons are a big deal, but it’s not enough of one to be able to — especially if Taiwan isn’t doing anything about it — to provoke a conflict or crisis,” she said.

  Beijing is facing an ailing economy at home and would like to avoid stoking tensions with Washington, which might stop it from taking aggressive actions “this year or in the immediate future” unless it is provoked by events such as Taiwan declaring independence, she said.

  However, China would continue “what it’s been doing, which is basically conduct air and maritime operations around Taiwan to show that they can control the maritime and airspace,” she said.

  Other experts expressed graver concerns over the possibility that Beijing might launch military actions against Taiwan, the paper said, citing US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral John Aquilino, who predicted that China would step up its aggressive behavior after the election.

  The Chinese spy balloons are used globally, but they “are unlikely to be practically useful for surveillance” in Taiwan, where China already has eyes and ears, it said.

  Hung Ho-fung (孔誥烽), a political economy professor and East Asia expert at Johns Hopkins University, said the balloons are “part of a Chinese tactic to diminish Taiwanese independence.”

  Beijing aims to “squeeze the airspace and then blur the line” between two sides across the Taiwan Strait “as much as possible to establish a kind of status quo” where no clear boundary exists, the article quoted him as saying.

  The article also quoted an analysis released on Thursday by US-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War, which said that China is attempting to “normalize using balloons in tandem with other aerial and naval” air defense identification zone incursions “to wear down Taiwan’s threat awareness.”

  Sending balloons is unlikely to push the US or Taiwan to any action, it said.

  Colonel Wang Chia-chun (王家駿), deputy head of the Ministry of National Defense’s joint operations planning section, earlier this month said that the military would not shoot down the balloons, as it would be a waste of ammunition and give Beijing the reaction it wants.
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