(Taipei) Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said Friday that a Chinese balloon crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait that separates the island from mainland China on Thursday, an unusual incident.
“A PRC (People’s Republic of China) balloon was detected at 11:52 a.m. (10:52 p.m. Eastern Time) yesterday (Thursday, Editor’s note) after crossing the center line of the Taiwan Strait at 101 nautical miles ( 187 km) southwest of Keelung,” a town in the north of the island, the Defense Ministry said.
“The balloon headed east and disappeared at 12:55 p.m. (11:55 p.m. Eastern Time),” he added.
“It could be a weather balloon or weather balloon that veered toward Taiwan due to monsoon winds,” Taiwan Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said Friday.
Such a balloon could be used to collect weather data, he continued.
According to a report released Friday morning, 27 planes also crossed the line in the 24 hours before 6 a.m. Friday (5 p.m. Eastern Time).
Beijing considers Taiwan a province that it has yet to reunify with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 and has intensified diplomatic and military pressure on Taipei in recent years.
If Chinese planes and warships are regularly detected around the island by the Taiwanese authorities, the presence of a Chinese balloon is unusual.
Chinese weather balloons – which did not represent “a military threat” – have, however, already flown over Taiwanese territory, underlines analyst Su Tzu-yun of Taiwan’s National Defense and Security Research Institute.
The one detected on Thursday could be “a deliberate test”, believes Mr. Su. “Beyond the meteorological objectives, it could also be a deliberate trial […] or a political signal.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin, for his part, indicated that he was “not aware” of the situation.
In February, a Chinese balloon flew over American territory before being shot down. Washington had denounced a espionage operation, which China had denied.