China PLA UAP Reporting Program 2020

In September 2020, China's People's Liberation Army formally established an artificial intelligence-assisted UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) tracking and reporting system, acknowledging to state media that PLA military units from multiple service branches had been submitting UAP reports. The South China Morning Post — which has indirect official PLA media access — published details of specific PLA encounters including sightings from naval vessels in the South China Sea and from PLA Air Force pilots. The Chinese system was designed to use AI to classify UAP reports and identify patterns. The timing — occurring in the same year the US established the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) — raised intelligence community questions about whether both nations were responding to the same patterns of observations. The PLA reporting program is the largest formal official non-US government UAP tracking system ever publicly acknowledged. Chinese astrophysicist commentary on the program was subsequently published in academic journals.