Akihabara News (Tokyo) — The release of the Soten drone this month represents a milestone in the low-profile campaign of the Japanese government to sweep China-made drones out of the Japanese market, allegedly over security and human rights concerns.
This campaign dates back to the latter months of the Shinzo Abe administration, when conservative politicians and officials began to raise fears that the dominance of Chinese drones (namely Shenzhen-based DJI which had a global market share over 70%) represented a security threat to Japan, and that domestic firms should be encouraged to choose Japanese makers instead.
This followed a warning by the US Department of Homeland Security in May 2019 that Chinese drones “may” be transmitting flight data back to Beijing, though no particular evidence for this claim was provided. Several other US agencies had raised similar concerns going back to 2017.
The first major action taken by the Japanese government was to eliminate the use of DJI drones by the Japan Coast Guard, which occurred last year.
Another pillar was the launch of the Safe and Secure Drone Basic Technology Development project, which has now produced the Soten drone.
In early 2019, before the anti-Chinese drone campaign began, DJI executives in Japan had been explaining to the media that they were especially interested in expanding in the surveying, industrial inspection, and security markets in Japan, while they were more skeptical about the prospects for consumer drone delivery services.
It is precisely these same markets that the Japanese government is now aiming to sweep DJI out of, using the government-funded Soten drones.
Meanwhile, the US government is increasing pressure on DJI. This week the US Treasury Department announced that it has placed investment restrictions on the firm. This time the reason given is not the alleged security risk, but because DJI drones are being employed in Xinjiang and thus supposedly contributing to human rights violations.
However, even if the political winds have turned frosty for DJI, the official campaign to push their drones out of both the United States and Japan is running up against one serious problem–they gained their market dominance by producing better products at a cheaper price, which is supposed to be the free market ideal.
With ACSL predicting only a thousand units in sales of the Soten drone next year, even with all of the anticipated government agency purchases, it seems unlikely that DJI drones will truly be swept away anytime soon, short of a complete legal ban.
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