WASHINGTON - The United States will explore taking action against entities connected to China’s military that supported the flight of a Chinese spy balloon into US airspace last week, a senior State Department official said on Thursday.

Washington is confident that the manufacturer of the Chinese balloon, shot down by the US military last weekend off the US East Coast, has a “direct relationship” with the People’s Liberation Army, the official said.

White House spokesman Karine Jean-Pierre echoed the notion that Washington would look at taking action, but the US government has not specified what measures are under consideration.

Ms Jean-Pierre told reporters that the US would also look at broader efforts to “expose and address” China’s larger surveillance activities that pose a threat to US national security and to allies and partners.

The FBI, which is leading efforts to analyse recovered remains of the balloon, told reporters in a briefing that it had obtained only limited physical evidence and did not yet have enough information to assess its capabilities.

“It’s very early for us in this process, and the evidence that has been recovered and brought to the FBI is extremely limited,” a bureau official said.

FBI officials said they still did not have access to the majority of the balloon’s “payload” where most of the onboard electronics were likely carried, and that much of it remains underwater.

Separately on Thursday, speaking at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman highlighted the flight of the Chinese balloon as another sign of Beijing’s efforts to reshape the international order.

“This irresponsible act put on full display what we’ve long recognised: That the PRC (People’s Republic of China) has become more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad,” Ms Sherman told the hearing.

Ms Sherman said Washington would continue to block China from using US technology to advance its military modernisation.

“The PRC is the only competitor with the intent and means to reshape the international order,” Ms Sherman said, adding that the balloon’s violation of US sovereignty and international law was the “latest example of that reality”.

Nevertheless, Ms Sherman said she hoped Washington and Beijing would be able to continue to work together on issues of shared concern such as climate change “at this difficult time”.

Political outrage

The spectacle of the Chinese balloon drifting over the US last week caused political outrage in Washington and brought into sharp focus the challenge posed by China to the US and its allies.

It prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a trip to Beijing that both countries had hoped would patch up frayed relations. Mr Blinken would have arrived in Beijing on Sunday.

Instead, Thursday’s slew of briefings and hearings highlighted the political pressure that President Joe Biden’s administration remained under to address the incident.

Democratic and Republican US lawmakers sharply criticised the US military and the Biden administration for failing to shoot down the balloon when it first entered US airspace, and instead waiting a week to do so.

The House of Representatives voted 419-0 for a resolution condemning China for the balloon incursion.

US lawmakers have demanded more information from the Biden administration about the incident.

“I hate to disappoint you. We haven’t learnt anything more than what everyone always knew,” Senator Bob Menendez, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said after emerging from a classified briefing given by administration officials on the balloon on Thursday.

On Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning dismissed US charges that the balloon was used for intelligence surveillance and described the US House resolution as “purely about scoring political points”.

PLA-linked manufacturer

In the statement released by the State Department, the senior official said the balloon manufacturer has a direct relationship with China’s military and is an approved vendor of the People’s Liberation Army.

The company also advertises balloon products on its website and hosts videos from past flights, which appear to have overflown US airspace and the airspace of other countries, the official said, without naming the business.

The official said the US has collected high-resolution imagery of the balloon from U-2 aircraft fly-bys that revealed it was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations.

China had conducted similar surveillance flights over more than 40 countries on five continents, the official said.

State Department spokesman Ned Price told a briefing later that activity had occurred “over the course of several years”. REUTERS, AFP