China Sends More Weather Balloons Into Taiwan’s Airspace

Four suspected Chinese weather balloons were launched toward Taiwan on Tuesday, with three crossing over the main island itself for the second day in a row, Taipei’s Defense Ministry said.

Taiwan’s disclosure on Wednesday came after a pair of balloons were detected crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait the night before, with one said to have flown through Taiwanese national airspace, according to a daily report on Chinese military movements in Taiwan’s surrounding sea and airspace.

The latest balloons bring the total to nine since the ministry began reporting relevant sightings in early December. The ministry said the objects—all floating toward the Pacific—disappeared after a period of several hours.

Taipei has said the craft are most likely used for meteorological purposes. Its defense spokesperson Sun Li-fang said late last month that the military did not believe there was a connection with Taiwan’s upcoming national elections.

“The nation’s armed forces will respond appropriately to unidentified balloons found entering Taiwan’s airspace based on the level of threat they pose to Taiwan’s security,” Sun was quoted as saying.

The relatively low altitude of the balloons—between 12,000 and 24,000 feet—led experts to assess that their primary task was not espionage.

However, this did not rule out a possible secondary purpose, according to Jeremy Hung, a researcher at the Taiwanese think tank the Institute for National Defense and Security Research.

“For example, is it possible that through balloons, information related to communication and radar data can actually be collected?” he told Newsweek last month.

China’s Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a written request for comment.

China claims Taiwan as part of its territory, although the current government in Beijing has never ruled there. Chinese leader Xi Jinping recently declared unification with the self-ruled island a “historical inevitability.”

Beijing largely kept to its side of the Taiwan Strait’s center line until 2020. Following visits to Taipei by high-ranking U.S. cabinet officials that summer and fall, China began sending increasingly more warplanes and warships across the 100-mile waterway and into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone.

In addition to the balloons, a pair of People’s Liberation Army aircraft—a JH-7 fighter-bomber and an unmanned aerial vehicle—briefly strayed over the median line on Tuesday, Taipei said. Four naval vessels were also detected in the strait.

The balloons are appearing at a sensitive time for Taiwan, which will hold its legislative and presidential elections on January 13. The latter is shaping up to be a close contest between the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and the opposition Kuomintang, which in recent years has enjoyed more cordial ties with China.

The incident also comes just under a year since a Chinese balloon believed to be carrying sophisticated intelligence-gathering equipment overflew the continental United States.

President Joe Biden ordered it shot down off the coast of South Carolina in early February 2023, a move that further chilled the already fraught relations between the two superpowers for months.