New evidence of China's spy balloon programme, including flights over Japan and Taiwan, has been uncovered by BBC Panorama.
Japan confirmed balloons had flown over its territory and said it’s prepared to shoot them down in future.
China didn’t directly address the evidence presented by the BBC.
US-China relations were thrown into turmoil earlier this year, when an alleged Chinese spy balloon was shot down off the US coast.
China claimed the balloon seen over north-western US in late January was a civilian airship, used for scientific research such as meteorology, and that it was an unintended and isolated event.
Working with artificial intelligence company, Synthetaic, the BBC has found multiple satellite images of balloons crossing East Asia.
The company’s founder, Corey Jaskolski, found evidence of one balloon crossing northern Japan in early September 2021. These images have not been published before.
Mr Jaskolski also believes that this balloon launched from deep inside China, south of Mongolia. The BBC has been unable to confirm this.
Speaking on BBC Panorama: Is China Watching You?, which aired on Monday at 8pm on BBC One in the UK and globally it can be watched on the BBC News channel this weekend – 1st & 2nd July, Yuko Murakami, from the Japanese Ministry of Defence, said they were “taking all precautions to monitor the situation on a daily basis” and would be prepared to shoot down future balloons to protect the “lives and property of people in the territory of Japan”.
To investigate whether China had launched other balloons, BBC Panorama searched social media and press reports across the region for sightings of UFOs in the sky.
Panorama found two photos taken by Taiwan’s weather service, appearing to show a balloon over the capital, Taipei, in late September 2021.
Mr Jaskolski then cross-referenced them with satellite imagery. “Within 90 seconds, we found the balloon off the coast of Taiwan,” he says.
The Taiwanese government told Panorama that it believed it was a weather balloon but Mr Jaskolski disagrees.
“Just based on the diameter of the balloon and the fact that the operating altitudes look similar…that looks an awful lot like the balloon that flew over the United States, over Japan,” he says.
Democratically governed Taiwan has long been in China’s sights.
Last year the Chinese military launched a rehearsal of a full-scale attack.
Mr Jaskolski’s research shows that the balloon which flew over the US in February was at one point around 80 miles (130 km) from a nuclear Air Force Base in Montana.
He also plotted the flightpath of the balloon back to its most likely launch site - Hainan Island in the South China Sea.
In a statement, the Chinese Embassy in London accused the US of releasing a large number of high-altitude balloons itself which have continuously circled the globe and illegally flown over China’s airspace.
It added, “China is a responsible country” and it always acts “in strict compliance with international law and respects all countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity.” It says it rejects “unfounded allegations to denigrate and attack China.”
(BBC Panorama: Is China Watching You? on BBC News)
