China says it will “preserve interests” when it comes to launching balloons

BEIJING (AP) — China on Tuesday said it would “resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests” over the United States’ launch of a suspected Chinese spy balloon, as relations between the two countries continue to deteriorate.

The balloon prompted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a much-anticipated visit to Beijing this week that had raised slight hopes of improving relations.

China claims it is a civilian balloon used for meteorological research but refuses to say which government agency or company it belongs to.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning reiterated Tuesday that the “unmanned airship” posed no threat and accidentally entered US airspace.

Mao again criticized the US for overreacting instead of acting “calmly and professionally” and for violently crashing the balloon in the Atlantic Ocean just off the US coast on Saturday.

When asked if China wanted the debris returned, she only reiterated that the balloon “belongs to China.”

“The balloon does not belong to the United States. The Chinese government will continue to resolutely uphold its legitimate rights and interests,” Mao said at a daily briefing, without giving further details.

Beijing’s stance has hardened considerably after a surprisingly mild initial reaction on Friday, in which it described the balloon’s presence as an accident and expressed its “regret” that the balloon had entered the United States

Subsequent comments grew firmer, in the same tone used to confront the US over questions from Taiwan over trade, technology restrictions and China’s claim to the South China Sea. China said it had filed a formal complaint with the US embassy in Beijing, accusing Washington of “manifest overreaction and seriously violated the spirit of international law and practice.”

Recent developments have exposed the extremely fragile nature of what many had hoped could be a manageable economic, political and military rivalry.

Tensions between the US and China have caused deep concern in Washington and many of its allies. They fear open conflict could have a strong negative impact on the global economy, especially since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, in which China has largely sided with Moscow.

Balloons have been sighted over countries from Japan to Costa Rica, either suspected or confirmed to be Chinese. Taiwanese media have reported that mysterious white balloons have been sighted over the island at least three times in the past two years.

This is particularly worrying because China claims Taiwan as its own territory, which it must take control of by force if necessary, and routinely directs warships and military aircraft into the island’s air defense identification zone and across the Taiwan Strait midline that separates the sides.

Taiwan’s defense ministry has never explicitly linked the balloons to China. However, recent excitement over the Chinese balloon in the US has drawn attention back to these mysterious sightings.

The size of the Chinese balloon in the US, as well as the equipment attached to it, had all led to intense speculation as to its purpose. Along with Washington, most security experts dismissed Beijing’s claims that the balloon was intended for meteorological rather than espionage purposes.

But it doesn’t look like any weather balloon Cheng Ming-Dean, head of Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau, has seen.

“In the world of meteorology, I haven’t found anyone who has seen or heard of a weather balloon that looks like this,” Cheng said.

While China has toned down the aggressive tone of its diplomacy in recent months, it “still pursues these broader, long-term strategic agendas on the economic, technological and security fronts,” said Collin Koh Swee Lean Research Fellow at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

“In other words, if you put the change in rhetoric aside, we actually don’t see any really meaningful improvement in the existing China-US relationship, which continues to be dominated by rivalry,” Koh said. “And the latest spy balloon incident seems only to widen the schism.”

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Associated Press reporter Huizhong Wu contributed to this report from Taipei, Taiwan.

The Associated Press

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