TAIPEI: Taiwan has not spotted any surveillance balloons from China in its vicinity, the island’s defence ministry said on Tuesday (Feb 14), as a dispute between China and the United States over spy balloons triggers worries about rising military tensions.
The US military on Feb 4 shot down what it called a Chinese spy balloon over South Carolina.
China said the balloon was a civilian research craft that had mistakenly blown off course and on Monday it accused the United States of sending its spy balloons over China. The United States denied that.
A Taiwan military intelligence officer said the armed forces had not seen any surveillance balloons from China near the island that were similar to the one shot down over the United States.
“The majority of the balloons near our waters were used for meteorological purposes,” the officer, Major General Huang Wen-chi, told a regular briefing in Taipei, adding that the weather balloons posed no serious security threat.
He said the military would destroy any balloon approaching Taiwan’s territory that posed “high security threats” but no such action had been necessary.