Flying balloons near Taiwan is part of China’s ‘gray zone’ tactics, Taiwanese officials said.
TAIPEI, Taiwan—Taiwan’s defense ministry reported spotting a Chinese balloon over waters near the island on Nov. 24, the first time it had flagged such an incursion since April.
The ministry, which regularly issues public reports on Chinese military activities around the island, said the balloon was spotted at 6:21 p.m. local time on Nov. 24 about 60 nautical miles (69 miles) to the northwest of Taiwan’s northern city of Keelung. The balloon was seen at an altitude of 33,000 feet.
The balloon entered the island’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) and vanished at 8:15 p.m. local time, according to the ministry.
An ADIZ is a publicly declared area adjoining a state’s national airspace within which approaching foreign aircraft must be ready to submit their identifiers and location. The area allows a state the time to judge the nature of incoming aircraft and take defensive measures if needed.
Twelve Chinese military planes and seven warships were also detected within the 24 hours ending at 6 a.m. on Nov. 25, the ministry said, with eight of the aircraft crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entering the island’s ADIZ.
China’s use of balloons came under scrutiny early last year, when the U.S. military shot down what it said was a Chinese spy balloon that had traversed the continental United States for a week.
Taiwan said it faced an “unprecedented scale” of Chinese balloon activity near the island in the weeks before the nation’s presidential and legislative elections in January. Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, who Beijing has accused of being a “separatist,” won the January election and was sworn into office in May.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sees Taiwan as a renegade province and has threatened to seize the island by force. In March, Adm. John Aquilino, then-head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said he believed that the Chinese military would be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.
China’s ‘Gray Zone’
From December 2023 until April this year, China deployed more than 100 balloons against Taiwan, some of which flew directly over the island’s territorial airspace.
Taiwanese authorities have described the balloons as part of the CCP’s “gray zone” operations, which are noncombat activities designed to put pressure on a foe.
Kevin Pollpeter, a research scientist at the Virginia-based Center for Naval Analyses, wrote in an article published in February 2023 that China could use balloons to fill in a “gap in strategic reconnaissance capabilities.” He wrote that while satellites in low earth orbit circle around Earth every 90 minutes, balloons can “loiter over a location for long periods of time.”
Pollpeter said that China could also deploy balloons during conflicts.
“Swarms of balloons sent against the United States and its allies and partners during wartime could divert limited resources away from defending against air and missile threats to deal with the balloon threat,” he wrote.
Also, on Nov. 25, Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a statement that four Chinese coast guard vessels had intruded into the waters of Taiwan’s offshore island of Kinmen earlier in the day. The CGA said the intrusion lasted for more than two hours.
The CGA called the intrusion a “gray zone” tactic and urged China to stop similar intrusive measures to ensure regional peace and stability.
Lai’s Upcoming Trip
Lai is scheduled to make his first official overseas trip since becoming president. According to the presidential office, Lai will visit the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, and Palau from Nov. 30 to Dec. 6. The three Pacific nations are Taiwan’s diplomatic allies.
On Nov. 22, five House Republicans sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken asking him not to impose “arbitrary conditions” on Lai if he decides to make a stopover in the United States, such as in Guam or Hawaii, during his upcoming trip.
“In the past, the State Department has reportedly attempted to micromanage the visits of high-ranking Taiwan officials by restricting their interaction with members of the media and limiting their ability to conduct public engagements,” the letter reads.
On Nov. 15, Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, said during a daily briefing that Washington should not allow Lai to transit through the United States, warning Washington “not to send any wrong signal to ‘Taiwan independence’ forces.”
The lawmakers wrote that Beijing’s demand to prevent Lai from entering the United States “is both outrageous and unacceptable.”
“After all, the United States does not have to ask the CCP for a permission slip when making decisions about who can or cannot visit our country,” the letter reads.
The lawmakers said they trust the State Department to “welcome Mr. Lai without any preconditions or restrictions” and expressed hope that President Joe Biden “will consider meeting personally with Mr. Lai during his visit.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled the name of Lin Jian. The Epoch Times regrets the error.