On the evening of July 17, 1990, one of the largest UFO sightings in modern Chinese history occurred in Shanghai and its surrounding areas—millions of citizens simultaneously witnessed a giant unidentified flying object emitting red and white light in the night sky.

📍 Location	📅 Date	🔍 Category
Shanghai and adjacent provinces, China	1990-07-17	Mass Sighting

Around 9 PM that night, numerous residents in both urban and suburban Shanghai noticed a “very large bright spot” in the night sky that first remained stationary, then began to move slowly. The object was enormous in size and clearly visible to the naked eye. It emitted alternating red and white flashes of light, with no sound at all.

What made this sighting so astonishing was its extremely wide coverage—not only in Shanghai, but also in provinces such as Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Anhui, where residents reported seeing the same object. Preliminary estimates put the number of witnesses in the millions.

An investigation by the Shanghai UFO Research Society showed that multiple observatories and weather stations in Shanghai received a flood of inquiry calls. Media outlets like Shanghai Television and Xinmin Evening News also received a massive number of reader letters reporting the sighting.

According to newspaper reports at the time, an airline passenger reported seeing the glowing mass from an altitude of 10,000 meters—describing it as “twice the size of the moon,” emitting a soft radiance. Additionally, weather station staff stated that their radar had detected anomalous echoes.

This incident caused a significant social response in China. The Chinese government had traditionally kept a low profile on UFO topics, but due to the sheer number of witnesses, the authorities could not completely ignore it. The China UFO Research Organization (CURO) conducted a detailed questionnaire survey, collecting over 1,000 independent sighting reports.

Renowned Chinese UFO researcher Wang Sichao later analyzed this case. He pointed out that the object’s flight trajectory and speed changes indicated it was a “physical craft,” not a meteor or satellite. Wang Sichao was a researcher at the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his analysis added academic weight to the case.

The 1990 Shanghai UFO incident remains one of the most classic cases in Chinese UFO research circles and is also one of the largest UFO sightings in Asia.

📚 Sources

• Wang Sichao, “Investigation Report on the July 17, 1990 UFO Incident” (1991), Flying Saucer Exploration Magazine
• Xinmin Evening News, consecutive reports from July 18 to 20, 1990
• China UFO Research Organization (CURO), “Questionnaire Analysis of the East China UFO Incident” (1990)