Behind China’s Balloons, a Push for Business to Serve the Military

Wu Zhe helped to found another firm facing sanctions, Beijing Nanjiang Aerospace Technology, alongside Shanghai Nanjiang Group, a real estate firm that had also ventured into graphene, intelligent robots and airborne vehicles. Beijing Nanjiang also signed a deal with Xilinhot, a city in northern China, to build a “near-space industrial park” where test flights could be held.

According to tracking by David Asher, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, one of Nanjiang’s subsidiaries appears to have sold drones directly to the People’s Liberation Army.

Traditionally the Chinese military would have acquired such technology from state-controlled entities, he said. But these links may suggest the P.L.A. is sourcing what were originally commercially developed balloons and drones and “applying them to military missions, including intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.”

“Nanjiang Group operates in a manner that is emblematic of a new type of civil-military fusion,” Mr. Asher said.

Mr. Wu also helped to set up a venture capital company that invested in a collection of satellite, hydrogen power and aerospace companies with funding from Beihang University, a top military university also under sanctions from the United States, according to documents accessed through Sayari, a commercial risk intelligence platform.

One of these companies, Dongguan Zhonghang Huaxun Satellite Technology, advertised on its website airships installed with monitoring systems, including for military needs, The Wire China previously reported. The website has been taken down.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/world/asia/spy-balloon-military-china.html