Taiwan claims to have discovered what appears to be the remains of a crashed Chinese weather balloon.
At 11:00 local time (03:00 GMT) on Thursday, the Taiwanese military reported seeing an unidentified object drifting above Dongyin, a Taiwanese-controlled island off the coast of China.
Later, a crash site on a shooting range was discovered.
The military added that preliminary investigations suggested the remnants were from a meteorological instrument.
Taiwan's Minister of Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng stated on Friday that authorities would look into the crashed balloon further but would not "jump to conclusions.".
According to local media, this is the first time that such a balloon's remains have been found in Taiwan's offshore islands. Senior defense official Chen Yu-lin.
Following the US's alleged downing of a Chinese surveillance balloon earlier this month in its airspace, tensions between China and the US have recently increased. Three additional objects, which the US claims are not likely to be foreign spy planes, were also shot down.
The sphere discovered on Dongyin had a diameter of about a meter and was imprinted with the name of a Chinese business that, according to online searches, sells radio and meteorological equipment.
Taiyuan Radio No 1 Factory Co. is the organization. Ltd's headquarters are in Taiyuan, the provincial capital of Shanxi and one of China's major industrial hubs.
According to a statement from the military, the sphere was also inscribed with the words "GTS13 digital atmospheric sounding instrument" and "meteorological instrument" in simplified Chinese.
Taiwan still uses traditional characters, whereas China has been using simplified characters since the 1950s.
The object's images have not been made public by the authorities.
The Taiwanese defense ministry reported on Tuesday that although it had previously seen weather balloons, it had not discovered any Chinese surveillance balloons. In addition, it declared that it would not think twice about shooting down any balloon it deemed dangerous.
These remarks followed earlier this week's Financial Times report, which cited unnamed officials, that dozens of Chinese military balloons had recently been spotted in Taiwan's airspace.
China views Taiwan, which is self-governing, as a province that will one day fall under its control.
With its own constitution and democratically elected leaders, Taiwan sees itself as distinct from the Chinese mainland.
