© Reuters. SUBMIT PICTURE: A ship cruises in between wind turbines in the Taiwan strait off the coast of Pingtan Island, Fujian province, China, April 10, 2023. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File picture
TAIPEI (Reuters) -Taiwan’s defence ministry stated on Friday that a Chinese weather condition balloon had actually crossed the Taiwan Strait typical line on Thursday, about a month before Taiwan’s governmental election.
” Our preliminary understanding is that it was a sounding balloon,” Taiwan Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng informed press reporters at parliament.
Taiwan, which China declares as its own area, regularly implicates Beijing of looking for to put in military or financial pressure to sway its elections towards results beneficial to the Chinese federal government.
The island will hold governmental and parliamentary elections on Jan. 13.
China has actually stepped up its military pressure versus Taiwan over the previous 4 years, consisting of staging 2 rounds of significant war video games around the island in the previous year and a half.
The defence ministry stated the balloon was identified 101 nautical miles (187 km) southwest of the northern Taiwanese city of Keelung, and took a trip eastward for about an hour before vanishing.
Previously this year, the defence ministry stated a balloon that came down on a remote Taiwanese-held islet near China’s coast was utilized for weather condition tracking and had no audio-visual recording devices on board.