Taiwan's Ministry of Defense reported that six Chinese balloons approached the island on Thursday.
According to data published on the agency's account on the social network X on Friday, the Taiwanese armed forces recorded the approach of nine aircraft of the People's Liberation Army of China (PLA) , six military and two service ships to the island.
“Nine aircraft crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entered the southwestern air defense identification zone of Taiwan“, the statement said.
Taiwan's Ministry of Defense claims that the purpose of the Chinese balloons appearing near the island is an alleged attempt to use cognitive warfare to influence the morale of islanders.
The situation surrounding Taiwan escalated after Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, visited the island in early August 2022. China, which considers the island part of its territory, condemned Pelosi's visit as U.S. support for Taiwanese separatism and held large-scale military exercises. Official relations between the central government of China and its island province were severed in 1949 after Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang forces, defeated in a civil war with the Chinese Communist Party, moved to Taiwan.
Business and informal contacts between the island and mainland China resumed in the late 1980s. Since the early 1990s, the two countries have been in contact through non-governmental organizations - the Beijing-based Association for the Development of Cross-Strait Relations (ARS) and the Taipei-based Foundation for Cross-Strait Exchange (FES).