"Taiwan Condemns Surge of Chinese Balloons and Military Planes as Election Interference"
As Taiwan's general elections approach, the Taiwanese defence ministry has reported 17 balloons crossing from mainland China into Taiwanese airspace since early December, with daily occurrences since New Year's Day. These incidents are seen as a form of "grey-zone attack" and "cognitive warfare" by Beijing to influence Taiwanese morale and potentially interfere with the elections. The median line, an unofficial border tacitly respected for decades, has been increasingly violated by the PLA since 2019. The US has been urged not to interfere with the elections, and there is no evidence linking these balloons to a previous incident involving a Chinese balloon over the US.