US and China’s ballooning distrust

The downing of a Chinese balloon over South Carolina last week is precisely the kind of unplanned encounter between two jostling superpowers that South-east Asia has long fretted about. United States President Joe Biden, acting on advice that the balloon was gathering intelligence, ordered it shot down. China maintains the balloon was merely collecting weather data when it accidentally strayed into US airspace. It called the decision to destroy the balloon an “obvious overreaction and a serious violation of international practice” and said it might take further actions in response. 

The episode did not result in an outbreak of hostilities but there was collateral damage. What would have been the first trip by a US secretary of state to China in six years was aborted. Not that there were high expectations from Mr Antony Blinken’s visit during which he would have met President Xi Jinping. But it could have been a sober attempt to restore some buoyancy to ties that have been trending downward since the Trump era. That will now not be on the cards for the foreseeable future, especially after Mr Biden’s unusually personal jibe at Mr Xi during his annual State of the Union address to Congress.