I only today started reading the news about the UFO over Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport in China. On 7 July, they had to shut down the airport after an unidentified flying object was reported above the runway. This event has dominated the news in China for the past week, with rumours ranging from Chinese military tests to extra-terrestrial visitations to a private small aircraft.

Thaindian.com has been covering the story in detail in English.

Alien object disrupts air traffic in China

An unidentified flying object (UFO) disrupted air traffic over Hangzhou, capital of east China’s Zhejiang province, authorities said Thursday.
Xiaoshan Airport was closed after the UFO was detected late Wednesday and some flights were rerouted to airports in Ningbo and Wuxi cities, Xinhua quoted an airport spokesman as saying.

UFO Sighting Closes Down Major Airport in China

According to witness accounts and pictures of the object, it was said to have looked like a “twinkling spot” which disappeared very quickly. Stunned witnesses claim to have seen a fiery, comet-like ball in the sky, but airport workers stated that the UFO was only visible on radar and would have been impossible to see with the naked eye.

Just a few hours before the airport closing, however, many residents of Hangzhou claim to have seen a glowing object which was hovering in the sky and making odd movements. A city bus driver by the name of Yu stated that the object moved down toward the ground for about 6 minutes dragging a comet like tail, and then changed direction quickly.

UFO In China Baffles All, Government Stands Clueless

The unidentified flying object sighted on Wednesday in the Chinese skies continues to baffle the officials investigating the case. After the radars picked up the object in their track path, all passengers were stopped from boarding flights. The military officials were also called for assistance by the airport authorities of Xiaoshan airport.

People’s Daily Online originally printed this photograph purportedly of the UFO in their article about the closure: Flights diverted, delayed as UFO detected hovering. You can see the image at full-size in the article.

The video above has been published all over the internet as live footage of the UFO, however it has been confirmed as a video taken earlier of a flying object which has already been identified.

UFO China News : Latest China Xiaoshan Airport UFO Picture // Current

The video footage is actually a “Kazakhstan UFO Video”, which was videotaped over the capital city of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan 30th June 2010.

UFO video footage was later on identified as Russian Soyuz rocket which was blasted off on 30th June 2010 carrying a new robotic cargo ship filled with tons of supplies for astronauts living on the International Space Station.

The same site has posted a number of photographs that they believe are legitimately of the UFO over the airport last week. You can see the images full-size on the article: UFO China News : Latest China Xiaoshan Airport UFO Picture // Current

An announcement by the Chinese government is expected today.

UPDATE 23 August

UFO & Paranormal News says that:

One of the heads of China’s famous Purple Mountain Astronomical Observatory, Prof. Wang Sichao, has gone public admitting the UFOs are real and aliens are visiting Earth and that the observatory has observed their craft many times. The admittance of UFO reality was made yesterday within a official speech entitled tellingly ‘China’s UFO truth’… In the event that these aliens do not come in peace, he stressed they are not gods and have flaws and thus we can possibly defend ourselves.

I’ve yet to find a reference to this in English in any journal not specifically focused on extra-terrestrial visitations.

However, a few days ago on the 21st of July, an update to this article was posted:
forgetomori » UFO over Hangzhou, China: a long exposé

Bruce Maccabee takes a look at the photos and confirms that “the images are consistent with being the result of taking nighttime, ‘long’ exposure photographs of a helicopter with a searchlight”. As for what actually caused the airport shutdown, Maccabee is, like Oberg and everyone else, at a loss from the lack of reliable information. “It may have been a ‘military vehicle’ as suggested by recent stories or something else. … We may never know”.