Chinese spy balloon has been used to snoop on India as well, say US officials

The US has linked the spy balloon episode to a more extensive Chinese surveillance programme, saying it has been used for spying in India, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, and Vietnam.

A Chinese spy balloon drifts to the ocean after being shot down off the coast in Surfside Beach, South Carolina, U.S on 4 February 2023 | Photo: REUTERS/Randall Hill

New Delhi: In a stark revelation, United States officials have said that China’s surveillance balloon programme is not limited to the US and has also been used to spy on India.

Referring to the spy balloon that was shot down by F-22 fighters of the US Air Force early Sunday, the officials clarified that the incident was linked to a vast surveillance programme that China has been running from its Hainan province, which lies off the mainland’s south coast.

The surveillance programme, they told Washington Post, has “collected information on military assets in countries and areas of emerging strategic interest to China including Japan, India, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines.”

Further, the balloons are supposed to be operated by the People’s Liberation Army Air Force and have been spotted across five continents, the US officials said.

Defining it as a “massive effort”, they added that China has essentially taken a very old methodology of information gathering, and embedded modern surveillance and imagery technologies in it, and used it to gather sensitive information about other countries.

ThePrint reported in 2019 that China had deployed balloon-borne radars in Nyingchi and NamTso in Tibet to spy on India.

The US will now inform its allies and partners about this information-gathering balloon apparatus that China is using on a global scale, the officials said.

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman reportedly briefed 150 diplomats from 40 embassies about the balloon incident and the information they gathered in Washington D.C. Monday.

Further, the US embassy in Beijing also gathered diplomats from other countries to provide their findings regarding the incident on Monday and Tuesday.

While the specifics of China’s spy-balloon fleet remain unknown, US officials suspect there to have been “dozens” of these flights since 2018. Specifically, four Chinese spy balloons have recently been spotted over the US. These have flown over Guam, Hawaii, Texas and Florida.

The impact of the Chinese spy balloon on the already fraught US-China relationship has been severe. The Secretary of State Antony Blinken cancelled his impending visit to Beijing shortly after the incident. The meeting was seen as a thaw amidst escalating tension between the two countries via trade wars, technology decoupling, Taiwan, and Covid-19.