Six Chinese balloons flew near or over Taiwan this week, with navy ships and war planes appearing near its territorial waters and airspace, in a continuation of China’s strategy of harassment.
The balloons all crossed over into Taiwan’s side of the sensitive median line on Sunday, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry.
One also flew directly into Taiwan airspace and crossed Taiwan island at its southern tip, according to a map the ministry provided. The others flew just north of the port of Keelung, where Taiwan has an important naval base.
Between Sunday and early Monday morning, four Chinese warplanes and four navy ships were detected around Taiwan, the Defense Ministry said. Taiwan’s military monitored the situation with combat aircraft, navy vessels, and land-based missile systems, the ministry said.
It remains unclear whether the balloons have an explicit military function but they appear to be part of a campaign of intimidation and harassment against the liberal democratic self-governed island, which the rivaling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing is claiming should be subject to its governance, vowing to claim the territory by force if necessary. China and Taiwan remain at war, as no peace treaty was ever signed in the Chinese civil war. The two split following the seizure of power by Mao Zedong’s communists on the Chinese mainland.
China’s campaign of intimidation against Taiwan includes the regular deployment of Chinese warships and planes in waters and airspace around the island, often crossing the median line of the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait that divides them.
In the latest incident, revealed by Taiwan on Monday in its daily report on Chinese military activities, its defense ministry said that the six balloons which flew over the strait into Taiwan’s side of the median line on Sunday were all headed east before they vanished.
The dispatch of such balloons, which generally disappear into the Pacific to the east, appears to be on the rise, though their purpose has not been publicly announced.
The Taiwan Strait’s median line previously served as an unofficial barrier between Taiwan and China, but Chinese fighter jets, drones, and now balloons regularly fly over it. The CCP says it does not recognise the existence of the median line.
Earlier this month after another sighting of Chinese balloons, Taiwan’s ministry in a strongly worded statement accused China of threatening aviation safety and waging psychological warfare on the island’s people with its balloons, days before Taiwan’s Jan. 13 presidential elections.
In the lead-up to the election, China had been stepping up such activities, along with its rhetorical threats against Taiwan, though the threats are generally seen to be backfiring.
Taiwan’s incumbent Democratic Progressive Party, which states that Taiwan is an independent country, won a third straight term in the presidency, this time under then-Vice President Lai Ching-te—a victory mostly seen as a victory against the CCP’s threats of unification under its socialist system. Mr. Lai won 40 percent of the popular vote.
However, his ruling party failed to hold onto its parliamentary majority, and Taiwan’s Nationalist Party, which wants closer relations with communist China, won just one more seat in the legislature than the DPP: 52-51 in the 113-seat Legislative Yuan. The party of former Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je siphoned votes off both parties, especially by appealing to young people on TikTok. Mr. Ko’s party, the Taiwan People’s Party, won eight seats, with which the major parties will now seek to form a coalition.
In the United States early last year, President Joe Biden vowed sharper rules to track, monitor, and potentially shoot down unknown aerial objects after three weeks of heightened national security concerns sparked by the discovery of a suspected Chinese spy balloon transiting over much of the U.S. mainland and Canada.
The United States labeled the balloon a military craft and shot it down with a missile but only after it had reached the east coast. The U.S. Navy recovered what it said was sophisticated surveillance equipment. China responded angrily, saying it was only a weather balloon that had blown off course and called its downing a major overreaction.
China experts refer to such actions as the CCP’s “gray area tactics,” which cause consternation among its foes without sparking a direct confrontation. China has long blurred the lines between military and civilian functions, including in the South China Sea, where it operates a huge maritime militia—ostensibly civilian fishing boats that act under government orders to assert Beijing’s territorial claims.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
