Taiwan claims to have discovered the remains of what appears to be a Chinese weather balloon that crashed.
At 11:00 local time (03:00 GMT) on Thursday, the Taiwanese military reported that it had seen an unidentified object drifting above Dongyin, an island off the coast of China that is under Taiwanese control.
Later on, it discovered a crash site on a shooting range.
The military added that preliminary examinations appeared to indicate the remnants were a component of a meteorological instrument.
Chiu Kuo-cheng, Taiwan's minister of defense, stated on Friday that investigators would look into the crashed balloon further but would not "jump to conclusions.".
According to local media, senior defense official Chen Yu-lin stated that this was the first time that such a balloon's remains had been found in Taiwan's offshore islands.
After the US shot down what it claimed to be a Chinese surveillance balloon in its airspace earlier this month, tensions between China and the US have risen once again in recent weeks. Additionally, the US shot down three other objects that it claims are not likely to be foreign spy planes.
The sphere, which had a diameter of about a meter, was discovered on Dongyin, and it bore the name of a Chinese business that, according to online searches, sells radio and meteorological equipment.
Taiyuan Radio No 1 Factory Co. is the business. Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province and one of China's major industrial hubs, is where Ltd is headquartered.
The GTS13 digital atmospheric sounding instrument and "meteorological instrument" were also written in simplified Chinese characters on the sphere, according to a statement from the military.
Since the 1950s, China has used simplified characters, but Taiwan has stuck with traditional characters.
The object has not been photographed by the authorities.
The Taiwanese defense ministry reported on Tuesday that while it had not yet discovered any Chinese surveillance balloons, it had previously discovered weather balloons. It added that it would not think twice about shooting down any balloon that it deemed to be a threat.
These statements were made in response to the Financial Times' earlier this week report, which cited unnamed officials and claimed that dozens of Chinese military balloons had recently been spotted in Taiwan's airspace.
China views Taiwan, which is independent, as a breakaway province that will eventually come under its rule.
However, Taiwan views itself as different from the Chinese mainland because it has a separate constitution and democratically elected officials.
