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Was it a UFO or secret military aircraft that caused the shutdown of China’s Xiaoshan Airport for an hour on Wednesday night? Whatever it was, it was recorded on airport radar at about 9 p.m.

According to the Xinhua news agency, after the unidentified flying object was spotted, airport authorities stopped passengers from boarding planes, and outgoing flights were grounded for an hour in Hangzhou, the capital city of China’s Zhejiang province. When officials closed the airport, incoming flights were rerouted to other airports. So far, no explanation has been offered to explain the UFO. However, several hours before the airport incident, many Hangzhou residents described seeing a large, brightly lit, elongated object in the sky.

China Daily reported that authorities may know more about the mystery UFO than they’re letting on, hinting that there might be a military connection and that a final explanation may be forthcoming today.

This is certainly not the first time an unexplained object has been observed in China. In July 2009, during the viewing of a solar eclipse in China, scientists at the Purple Mountain Astronomical Observatory in Nanjing filmed 40 minutes of a UFO reportedly near the sun. No definitive explanation of the event has emerged.

In a Jan. 11, 2000, article, The New York Times reported that many UFOs were seen in the skies above China, noting that “the normally conservative official news media have been lavishing attention on UFO news.”

The Times added that “this is an extraordinary reversal in a country where, 25 years ago, life was so focused on Communist politics that most people could not imagine anything so ethereal as an unidentified flying object, and expressing belief in them might have been a ticket to jail.”