Chinese satellite launch triggers air raid alert in Taiwan ahead of election

Taiwan has declared an air alert across the island after a Chinese satellite flew over its airspace in the south a few days before an important presidential election, UNN reports citing the BBC.

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Cell phone users across the island received a message warning them to "exercise caution for security reasons.

As indicated, the "presidential alert" emphasized concerns about the important presidential and parliamentary elections on Saturday.

China has long claimed that Taiwan is part of its own territory and has been accused of interfering in the vote.

The self-governing island with a population of 23 million is a key flashpoint in the struggle between China and the United States for dominance in Asia, the newspaper writes. Analysts say the election will determine the trajectory of relations between Beijing and Washington.

The satellite was launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in China's Sichuan Province at 15:03 local time, Taiwan's Ministry of Defense said. Around the same time the warning was issued, China's video surveillance system announced that the satellite, called Einstein Probe, had been launched with "complete success.

Taiwan's Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said that the launch of the satellite over Taiwanese airspace, so close to the election, is a "gray zone" activity, Reuters reports.

"When a missile is flying openly in our sky, some of its tubes or debris will fall in this region," Wu said. - "That's why our national warning center issues this kind of alert. This has happened before.

Taiwan said its defense ministry was tracking the satellite's trajectory to "properly warn and respond" to the situation. According to the ministry, the satellite was at a high altitude when it crossed Taiwan's airspace.

Taiwanese media report that this is the first time that the government has issued a warning of this kind across the island.

The Taiwanese Ministry of Defense later apologized for the inaccurate mention of the missile in a message to cell phones.

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According to the European Space Agency, the Einstein Probe is the result of a partnership between the agency, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.

The satellite "will observe mysterious short-term phenomena in the universe, comparable to the flickering of fireworks, with the aim of revealing the cruel and little-known aspects of space," China's Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday.

In December, the Taiwanese media also reported that Chinese launch vehicles had flown over the island. A Focus Taiwan report published on December 10 said that a launch vehicle, also launched from Xichang, flew over southwestern Taiwan in outer space.