REUTERS
February 17, 2023 at 12:30 JST
Itsunori Onodera, standing, of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party speaks at a meeting of ruling coalition lawmakers discussing defense policy. (Koichi Ueda)
The flight of suspected Chinese surveillance balloons has shown that Japan and Taiwan need to share “critical” intelligence about possible aerial threats, a senior defense policymaker for Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party said.
Although Japan does not have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, it worries that China could imperil Japanese security if it gained control over the self-governing 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,” Itsunori Onodera, a former defense 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, 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 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 defense ministry officials briefed Onodera and other Liberal Democratic Party 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,” Minoru Kihara, one of the lawmakers, told reporters after the briefing.
Japan’s Self Defense Force 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 U.S. fighter jets shot down a Chinese balloon on Feb. 4, and subsequently three other objects.
China said the balloon was a civilian weather-monitoring aircraft and it accused the United States of sending its balloons into Chinese airspace.
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