Japan has warned China that violations of its airspace by surveillance balloons were \u201ctotally unacceptable\u201d, as new information emerged that unidentified aerial objects that had entered Japanese airspace in recent years were likely Chinese spy balloon flights.
\n\u201cAs a result of further investigation of specific balloon-shaped flying objects that were confirmed in Japan\u2019s airspace in the past, it is strongly suspected that they were unmanned surveillance balloons from China,\u201d Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters on Wednesday.
\nJapan\u2019s defence ministry said on Tuesday that it \u201cstrongly suspects\u201d Chinese surveillance balloons had entered Japanese territory at least three times since 2019.
\nThe ministry also said that it had \u201cstrongly demanded China\u2019s government confirm the facts\u201d of the incident and \u201cthat such a situation not occur again in the future\u201d.
\n\u201cViolations of airspace by foreign unmanned reconnaissance balloons and other means are totally unacceptable,\u201d the ministry added.
\nAccording to international media reports, Beijing hit back on Wednesday, saying Japan lacked proof to support its accusations.
\n\u201cJapan is making groundless accusations and smearing China without conclusive evidence. We are resolutely opposed to that,\u201d China\u2019s foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters.
\nJapan\u2019s reassessment of past intrusions into its airspace has heightened since the United States shot down a Chinese balloon this month and briefed officials from 40 nations about the object, including Japan.
\nIn the wake of the incident, the US military adjusted radar settings to detect smaller objects and discovered three more unidentified craft that US President Joe Biden also ordered shot down \u2013 one over Alaska, another over Canada and the third over Lake Huron of Michigan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Japan has warned China that violations of its airspace by surveillance balloons were \u201ctotally unacceptable\u201d, as new information emerged that unidentified aerial objects that had…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4851,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}