Taipei:
Taiwan's Ministry of Defense said Friday that a Chinese weather balloon crossed the center line of the Taiwan Strait on Thursday, about a month before Taiwan's presidential election.
“Our initial understanding is that it was a sounding balloon,” Taiwan Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng told reporters in parliament.
Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, regularly accuses Beijing of trying to apply military or economic pressure to steer its elections toward outcomes favorable to the Chinese government.
Presidential and parliamentary elections will be held on the island on January 13.
China has increased its military pressure against Taiwan over the past four years, including staging two rounds of major war games around the island in the past year and a half.
The Defense Ministry said the balloon was detected 101 nautical miles (187 km) southwest of the northern Taiwanese city of Keelung and traveled east for about an hour before disappearing.
Earlier this year, the Defense Ministry said a balloon that crashed on a remote islet in Taiwan, close to the Chinese coast, was used for weather monitoring and had no audiovisual recording equipment on board.
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