Never let it be said that the Chinese Communist Party does not know how to spread holiday cheer by harassing a neighboring country.
Eight balloons is a trivial number of balloons if they are the kind you see in parades and birthday parties. Not if they are the kind intended to spy on people and put them on edge. According to the Taiwanese government, the latest batch of spy balloons is the most yet that China has pitched at Taiwan within the same brief period (Reuters, February 10):
Taiwan’s defence ministry said on Saturday it had detected eight Chinese balloons crossing the Taiwan Strait in the previous 24 hours, two of which flew across the island, in an uptick of activity at the start of the Lunar New Year holiday.
Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory despite the strong objections of the government in Taipei, has complained since December about the balloons, saying they are a threat to aviation safety and attempt at psychological warfare.
In January, China told the world that all the balloons that Taiwan is complaining about are just checking for rain. Chen Binhua, with China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said that the balloons “are mostly used for people’s livelihood purposes, such as meteorological monitoring. The Democratic Progressive Party authorities are advised not to politically hype up such issues and incite cross-strait antagonism and confrontation.”
Perhaps Chen also “believes” that the Taiwanese are imagining things when China sends warships and warplanes across the Taiwan Strait in gestures that seem—only to the paranoid?—like intimidation; when Xi Jinping says that the PRC’s “reunification” with Taiwan must happen and refuses to renounce the use of force to make it happen; when the Chinese Communist Party produces an eight-part documentary series about how it’s gonna beat the crap out of “separatist” Taiwan if war comes. All just kidding around?
The balloons directed against Taiwan are the same brand of hyped-up, not-for-spying balloon that China sent over the United States early in 2023.
