Taiwan’s defence ministry has said that a Chinese balloon crossed the Taiwan Strait median line on Thursday, about a month before Taiwan’s presidential election.
The ministry of national defence (MND) earlier described it as a “surveillance balloon” but the defence minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng later told reporters at parliament: “our initial understanding is that it was a sounding balloon”.
A sounding balloon is a meteorology balloon which carries atmospheric measuring equipment to high altitudes. US officials have previously said large surveillance balloons are produced by the People’s Liberation Army for collecting intelligence. The Guardian has contacted the MND for clarification on what was detected on Thursday.
Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, frequently accuses Beijing of seeking to exert military or economic pressure to sway its elections toward outcomes favourable to the Chinese government.
The island will hold presidential and parliamentary elections on 13 January.
The defence ministry said the balloon was detected shortly before midday on Thursday, 101 nautical miles (187 km) southwest of the northern Taiwanese city of Keelung, and that it travelled eastward for about an hour before disappearing. An accompanying map showed a tracking line beginning near the Chinese coast and crossing the median line, which is an unofficial border splitting the Taiwan Strait.
Chinese military aircraft were also detected in Taiwan’s air defence identification zone in the last 24 hours. A reconnaissance plane and drone, 12 fighter jets and a transport plane were also detected, all reported by the MND as crossing the median line.
China has stepped up its military pressure against Taiwan over the past four years, including staging two rounds of major military exercises around the island in the past year and a half, including the firing of missiles over Taiwan.
Earlier this year, the defence ministry said a balloon that came down on a remote Taiwanese-held islet close to China’s coast was used for weather monitoring and had no audio-visual recording equipment on board. The MND has not confirmed any other detections. In June BBC Panorama reported photographs taken by Taiwan’s weather service revealed an apparent balloon flying over Taiwan’s capital Taipei in 2021. Other satellite images appeared to show balloons launched from China flying over Japan and off Taiwan’s coast.
In February the US shot down what it said was a Chinese surveillance balloon flying in its airspace. The fallout saw the collapse of attempts to repair the US-China relationship, with US secretary of state Antony Blinken cancelling a visit to Beijing. The US later said it had not collected intelligence.
