China says US flew at least 10 balloons over its airspace in past year
China accused the US of hypocrisy over spying Monday, claiming the Biden administration had flown more than 10 high-altitude balloons in its airspace over the past year – a claim Washington categorically denied.
The Chinese allegation came nine days after the US military shot down a Beijing spy balloon that had crossed from Alaska to South Carolina, sparking a new crisis in relations between the two powers that were already at their lowest level in decades.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin offered no evidence to back up the claim about the US balloons, such as how they had been dealt with or whether they had government or military links.
“It is also common for US balloons to illegally enter the airspace of other countries,” Wang said at a daily briefing. “Since last year, US high-altitude balloons have illegally flown over China’s airspace more than 10 times without the approval of Chinese authorities.”
Wang said the US should “first reflect on itself and change course, rather than smear and instigate a confrontation.”
White House national security spokesman John Kirby unequivocally denied China’s accusation.
“Not true. Not doing it. Just absolutely not true,” he said in an interview with MSNBC. “We are not flying balloons over China.”
National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson echoed Kirby’s comments, saying that any claim that the US government operates surveillance balloons over China is false.
“It is China that has a high-altitude surveillance balloon program for intelligence collection, connected to the People’s Liberation Army, that it has used to violate the sovereignty of the United States and over 40 countries across five continents,” Watson said.
“This is the latest example of China scrambling to do damage control. It has repeatedly and wrongly claimed the surveillance balloon it sent over the United States was a weather balloon and to this day has failed to offer any credible explanations for its intrusion into our airspace and the airspace of others.”
But Wang doubled down, alleging that the US has a far more sophisticated surveillance network.
“The US knows how many surveillance balloons it has sent into the skies in the world,” he alleged. “It’s quite clear to the global community which country is the number one spy empire in the world.”
China has maintained that the balloon shot down by the US on Feb. 4 was an unmanned airship made for meteorological research that had been blown off course. It has accused the US of a “trigger-happy overreaction” by shooting it down and threatened to take unspecified action in response.
Following the balloon incident, Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a planned visit to Beijing that many had hoped would put the brakes on the sharp decline in relations over Taiwan, trade, human rights and threatening Chinese actions in the disputed South China Sea.
Also Monday, the Philippines accused a Chinese coast guard ship of targeting one of Manila’s coast guard vessel with a military-grade laser and temporarily blinding some of its crew in the South China Sea, calling it a “blatant” violation of the island nation’s sovereign rights.
Wang said a Philippine coast guard vessel had trespassed into Chinese waters without permission on Feb. 6 and that Chinese coast guard vessels responded “professionally and with restraint.”
“China and the Philippines are maintaining communication through diplomatic channels in this regard,” Wang said.
Adding to tensions, the US military shot down three unidentified objects in as many days last week, most recently on Sunday over Lake Huron, in an extraordinary chain of events over US airspace that Pentagon officials believe has no peacetime precedent.
The Chinese balloon shot down by the US was equipped to detect and collect intelligence signals as part of a huge, military-linked aerial surveillance program that targeted more than 40 countries, the Biden administration declared Thursday, citing imagery from American U-2 spy planes.
Part of the reason for the four shootdown incidents in eight days is a “heightened alert” following the alleged Chinese spy balloon, Gen. Glen VanHerck, head of NORAD and the US Northern Command, said in a briefing with reporters.
When asked Monday whether the latest three objects shot down by the United States were Chinese in origin, Wang said he did “not have anything on that.”
“We believe that no irresponsible comments should be made when there is no clear evidence,” he said. “And we are absolutely opposed to made-up stories and smears against China.”
The Defense Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The US has since placed economic restrictions on six Chinese entities it said are linked to Beijing’s aerospace programs as part of its response to the incident.
The House of Representatives also voted unanimously last week to condemn China for a “brazen violation” of US sovereignty and efforts to “deceive the international community through false claims about its intelligence collection campaigns.”
With Post wires
