China says US balloons trespassed over 10 times since early 2022
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The comments mark the first time China has accused the US of sending balloons over its territory since a Chinese machine was shot down by US military.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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BEIJING/WASHINGTON - China said on Monday that US high-altitude balloons had flown over its airspace without permission more than 10 times since the beginning of 2022, drawing a swift denial from Washington.
China’s accusation exacerbated a dispute with the United States that began earlier in February after the US military shot down what it said was a Chinese spy balloon,
“Since last year, the US’ high-altitude balloons have undergone more than 10 illegal flights into Chinese airspace without the approval of the relevant Chinese departments,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular briefing in Beijing in response to a question.
“The US needs to reflect upon itself and change its wrong practice,” he added. “We reserve the right to take necessary means to deal with relevant incidents.”
Mr Wang did not specifically describe the balloons as military or for espionage purposes and did not provide further details.
He also sidestepped a question about a report in The Paper, a Chinese media outlet, which said China was getting ready to take down an unidentified object flying over its waters near the port city of Qingdao.
Asked how China had responded to such incursions, Mr Wang said its responses had been “responsible and professional”.
The White House promptly denied China’s accusation, which National Security Council spokesman Adrienne Watson dismissed as an effort at damage control by Beijing. “Any claim that the US government operates surveillance balloons over the PRC (People’s Republic of China) is false,” she said in a statement.
“It is China that has a high-altitude surveillance balloon programme 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,” she said in a statement.
China has failed to offer “any credible explanations” for the intrusions, she added.
Earlier, national security spokesman John Kirby said in a television interview: “Just absolutely not true. We are not flying balloons over China.”
The US Department of Defence did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s military on Monday said it reserved the right to shoot down any Chinese balloon it deems a threat.
The Financial Times reported that the balloon flights in the island’s territory by China’s military are frequent, with one occurring in recent weeks, citing a senior official from Taiwan. The devices appear in the airspace of Taiwan about once a month, another official said.
“The ministry has rules in terms of response and will continue revising the rules in a timely manner to respond to new threats such as balloons,” Defence Ministry spokesman Sun Li-fang said in a phone call.
“The military will adopt appropriate measures, including shooting threats down, according to the level of concern,” he added.
On Sunday, US military fighter jets shot down an octagonal object over Lake Huron. It was the fourth unidentified flying object to be shot down over North America by a US missile in a little more than a week.
On President Joe Biden’s order, a US F-16 fighter shot down the object at 2.42pm local time over Lake Huron on the US-Canada border, Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder said in an official statement.
Though it did not pose a military threat, the object could have potentially interfered with domestic air traffic as it was travelling at 6,000m, and it might have had surveillance activities, Brigadier-General Ryder said.
The object appeared to be octagonal in structure, with strings hanging off but no discernable payload, said a US official speaking on condition of anonymity.
The object was believed to be the same as one recently detected over Montana near sensitive military sites, prompting the closure of US airspace, the Pentagon said.
The military will try to recover the object downed over Lake Huron to learn more about it, General Glen VanHerck, head of the US North American Aerospace Defence Command and Northern Command, told reporters. He said it likely fell into Canadian waters.
The incident raised questions about the spate of unusual objects that have appeared over North American skies in recent weeks and raised tensions with China.
“We need the facts about where they are originating from, what their purpose is, and why their frequency is increasing,” said US Representative Debbie Dingell, one of several Michigan lawmakers who applauded the military for downing the object.
US officials identified the first object as a Chinese surveillance balloon and shot it down off the coast of South Carolina on Feb 4. Last Friday, a second object was shot down over sea ice near Deadhorse, Alaska. A third object was destroyed over Canada’s Yukon the next day, with investigators still hunting for the wreckage
“The security of citizens is our top priority, and that’s why I made the decision to have that unidentified object shot down,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters on Sunday.
North America has been on high alert for aerial intrusions following the appearance of a white, eye-catching Chinese airship over American skies earlier in February.
Pentagon officials said they have been scrutinising the radar more closely since then.
Surveillance fears appear to have US officials on high alert.
Twice in 24 hours, US officials closed airspace – only to reopen it swiftly.
On Sunday, the Federal Aviation Administration briefly closed airspace above Lake Michigan.
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told US broadcaster ABC that US officials think two of the latest objects were smaller balloons than the original one.
The White House said only that the recently downed objects “did not closely resemble” the Chinese balloon, echoing Mr Schumer’s description of them as “much smaller”.
“We will not definitively characterise them until we can recover the debris, which we are working on,” a spokesman said.
The Canadian authorities may have their own challenges trying to piece together what was shot down over the Yukon. The territory is a sparsely populated region in Canada’s far north-west, which borders Alaska. It can be brutally cold in the winter, but temperatures are unusually mild for this time of year, which could ease the recovery effort.
Republican lawmaker Mike Turner, who serves on the US House Armed Services Committee, suggested the White House might be overcompensating for what he described as its previously lax monitoring of American airspace.
“They do appear somewhat trigger-happy,” Mr Turner told CNN on Sunday. “I would prefer them to be trigger-happy than to be permissive.”
Republicans have criticised the Biden administration
