Dozens of Chinese military balloons have been spotted flying through Taiwan’s airspace in the past few years, the Financial Times reported yesterday.
“They come very frequently, the last one just a few weeks ago,” a senior Taiwanese official was quoted as saying.
Similar incursions happen once every month on average, another official said.
Photo courtesy of the Central Weather Bureau
The Ministry of National Defense only confirmed one such incident — four batches of Chinese balloons flew over northern Taiwan in February last year, it said.
Balloons were also spotted flying over Japanese, Philippine and other Asia-Pacific countries’ airspaces, but those governments have given little detail on the incursions, it said.
Chinese balloon programs have drawn global attention after one balloon was spotted and shot down by the US on Feb. 4, it said.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been “strengthening capacities it would need to invade Taiwan,” such as building up its air, naval and missile forces, conducting military exercises simulating an invasion of Taiwan, and carrying out bigger and more complex military action around Taiwan, it said.
The rising tensions between the US and China caused further concerns for possible Chinese military action, it said.
The balloons spotted in Taiwan’s airspace were often flying at about 6,000m, far lower than the one that traversed the US at about 18,000m, it quoted Taiwanese officials as saying.
They were bigger and heavier than normal meteorological balloons, which are allowed to fly through other countries’ airspaces without permission under international law, the officials said.
The balloons were developed by the Equipment Development Department of the Central Military Commission of the People’s Republic of China, it cited military and intelligence officials as saying.
The balloons have been collecting atmospheric data for radar and missile systems, Taiwanese officials said.
Air pressure and density can affect the accuracy of a missile after re-entry into the atmosphere, said Kitsch Liao (廖彥棻), who is assistant director of the Global China Hub at the Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council.
The atmospheric specifics can also affect over-the-horizon radars, which are long-range systems that China needs to operate in waters and airspace around eastern Taiwan, he said.
As algorithms involved in the operations require a large amount of data, and the conditions vary seasonally and annually, the “spy balloons” have to fly over repeatedly, he added.
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant’s license has expired and it cannot simply be restarted, the Executive Yuan said today, ahead of national debates on the nuclear power referendum. The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was disconnected from the nation’s power grid and completely shut down on May 17, the day its license expired. The government would prioritize people’s safety and conduct necessary evaluations and checks if there is a need to extend the service life of the reactor, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference. Lee said that the referendum would read: “Do
RSS