Balloons from China float above Taiwan before election

Experts see them as a message of caution to voters

TAINAN, Taiwan — A surge in sightings of balloons from China flying over Taiwan has drawn the attention of the island’s military and struck some experts as a calculatedly ambiguous warning to voters weeks before its presidential election.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense has reported occasional sightings of balloons floating from China since last month and a surge in recent days, according to the ministry’s daily tally of Chinese military activities near the island. Official Taiwanese accounts about balloons were previously very sporadic.

The recent balloons have mostly stayed off Taiwan’s coast. On Monday, however, one flew across the island, according to the ministry’s descriptions of their paths. Of four spotted Tuesday, three flew over Taiwan, and two passed through to the island’s east side, facing the Pacific Ocean. Another flew over the island Wednesday.

The Taiwanese reports also noted some of the balloons’ proximity to the island’s military bases. Of the four reported Tuesday, three were first detected 120 to 184 miles from the Ching Chuan Kang Air Base in the city of Taichung. Taiwan’s defense ministry declined to specify how close to the base they may have flown.

The balloons do not appear to pose an immediate military menace to Taiwan, a self-governed democracy of 23 million people that Beijing says is its territory. Taiwan’s defense ministry last month indicated that the balloons seemed to be for collecting data about the atmosphere, but it has declined to give details about the ones detected this week.

“The Ministry of National Defense is closely monitoring and tracking them, responding appropriately, and is also assessing and analyzing their drift patterns,” Major General Sun Lifang, a spokesperson for the ministry, said Thursday in response to questions about the balloons.

Taiwan has, so far at least, experienced none of the alarm that gripped many Americans last year when a hulking highaltitude Chinese surveillance balloon floated across the United States. China denied that the balloon was for spying, but Washington did not buy that line, and the dispute soured relations for many months.

Taiwanese people are used to Chinese military flights near the island, and news of the balloons has generally been met with calm, if not indifference.

The balloon flights may nonetheless be part of the “gray zone” tactics that China uses to warn Taiwan of its military strength and options without tipping into bald-faced confrontation. The timing of the balloon flights, close to Taiwan’s election, was telling, said Ko YongSen, a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a think tank in Taipei funded by Taiwan’s defense ministry. Ko has analyzed the pattern of recent sightings.

“It’s more an intimidating effect in what happens to be a quite sensitive time, with we in Taiwan holding our election on Jan. 13,” Ko said in an interview. China, he said, “may want to tone it down. People say that it has recklessly used major weapons like planes and ships for harassment, so it’s shifted to balloons that can be used for a certain kind of lower-intensity intimidation and harassment.”

In the election, Taiwanese voters will choose a president and legislature, and Beijing has made no secret of wanting the governing Democratic Progressive Party to lose power. The party opposes Beijing’s claims to Taiwan and has asserted Taiwan’s distinctive identity and claims to nationhood.