In the last couple months, there has been a rash of UFO sightings in China, not only in rural areas, but also over the metropolises, including the capital. An alien abduction of a Beijing resident has even been reported.
Coming as they did at the turn of the millennium, these events have many wondering: what can they mean? Should we be concerned?
In fact, there is a very logical explanation for the sudden recent increase in UFO activity in China. The answers can be deduced from an examination of the historical record of UFO visits to our planet.
Although no one doubts that UFOs must have visited the Earth many times in the past, the evidence for pre-modern periods is scattered and circumstantial.
That all changed in the late 1940s, when the first major wave of modern UFO sightings began. At that time, the focus of alien activity was the US. Numerous alien abductions occurred throughout the country, and sightings were frequent. Perhaps the most famous was the 1952 and 1965 events, when multiple UFOs flew in patterns -- deemed by experts to be impossible for human-manufactured aircraft -- over Washington D.C., witnessed by hundreds of people.
After that wave, there was something of a lull, although incidents there were periodic. The recent wave of sightings in China represents the second such concentrated wave in modern history.
It is this pattern that provides us with a clue to the explanation. If we think about what aliens would be trying to achieve by their visits, we can see that, in the 1950s, they sought out the US, which was the nation that was set to dominate world affairs. Sure enough, the wave of UFO visits marked a period of unprecedented global hegemony by the US. Thereafter, as we see, the visits tailed off, probably as a result of the cracks in US leadership that appeared in the 1970s, the Vietnam War, the oil shocks, etc.
But the aliens continued to visit the US, albeit less frequently, because they did not have another candidate for world leadership -- until now. This new wave is a clear sign that the aliens have decided that China is set to succeed the US as the most powerful country in the world.
There is another logical support for this conclusion. When the first wave of UFO sightings occurred, the aliens undoubtedly relied on electronic signals to determine their initial choice of country. Since the US was far ahead of the rest of the world in the amount and variety of broadcast signals of all types, they would naturally have been led to the preliminary conclusion that the US was the world leader. Of course, they were correct, but only in simplistic technological terms.
Coming from an unimaginably advanced civilization, we can further presume that, as their understanding of the human race deepened, they must have begun to search for a superior culture as the focus of their investigations -- what else could they select but China, with its 5,000 years of history? The reasoning is almost inescapable.
We can now understand why the Chinese government has been careful not to condemn the sightings. On the contrary, it is a matter of national pride to have been chosen by our alien counterparts as the leaders of Earth. The state has, needless to say, a responsibility to sort out the genuine evidence of contact from the inevitable hoaxes that the Chinese populace are likely to report, in their eagerness to help promote the glory of the nation. And so the Chinese government has wisely given its imprimatur to UFO studies as a legitimate field of scientific inquiry, not a superstitious fantasy like the teachings of the Falun Gong.
Back here in Taiwan, those people in Taiwan still clinging to that old dream of independence can only view these events with dread. In the first place, the fact of impending Chinese hegemony effectively rules out any hope that Taiwan can defend itself. Even worse, one well-reported sighting in the current wave occurred over the north of Taiwan on Dec. 8. This can only mean that, like so many Earthlings before them, the aliens have gotten confused by the name "Republic of China" or, even worse, have actually begun to internalize the "one China" principle!
It was bad enough when Bill Clinton came out in favor of China, but now the aliens, too? Taiwan should probably just give up....
Bo Tedards is a researcher at the Institute for National Policy Research.
Taiwan’s higher education system is facing an existential crisis. As the demographic drop-off continues to empty classrooms, universities across the island are locked in a desperate battle for survival, international student recruitment and crucial Ministry of Education funding. To win this battle, institutions have turned to what seems like an objective measure of quality: global university rankings. Unfortunately, this chase is a costly illusion, and taxpayers are footing the bill. In the past few years, the goalposts have shifted from pure research output to “sustainability” and “societal impact,” largely driven by commercial metrics such as the UK-based Times Higher Education (THE) Impact
History might remember 2026, not 2022, as the year artificial intelligence (AI) truly changed everything. ChatGPT’s launch was a product moment. What is happening now is an anthropological moment: AI is no longer merely answering questions. It is now taking initiative and learning from others to get things done, behaving less like software and more like a colleague. The economic consequence is the rise of the one-person company — a structure anticipated in the 2024 book The Choices Amid Great Changes, which I coauthored. The real target of AI is not labor. It is hierarchy. When AI sharply reduces the cost
The inter-Korean relationship, long defined by national division, offers the clearest mirror within East Asia for cross-strait relations. Yet even there, reunification language is breaking down. The South Korean government disclosed on Wednesday last week that North Korea’s constitutional revision in March had deleted references to reunification and added a territorial clause defining its border with South Korea. South Korea is also seriously debating whether national reunification with North Korea is still necessary. On April 27, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung marked the eighth anniversary of the Panmunjom Declaration, the 2018 inter-Korean agreement in which the two Koreas pledged to
I wrote this before US President Donald Trump embarked on his uneventful state visit to China on Thursday. So, I shall confine my observations to the joint US-Philippine military exercise of April 20 through May 8, known collectively as “Balikatan 2026.” This year’s Balikatan was notable for its “firsts.” First, it was conducted primarily with Taiwan in mind, not the Philippines or even the South China Sea. It also showed that in the Pacific, America’s alliance network is still robust. Allies are enthusiastic about America’s renewed leadership in the region. Nine decades ago, in 1936, America had neither military strength