President Joe Biden said in a new interview that the recently recovered Chinese spy balloon that traversed the continental US did not damage bilateral relations between the two countries.
“The idea shooting down a balloon that’s gathering information over America and that makes relations worse?” Biden told PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff in a wide-ranging interview a day after his second State of the Union address.
“I made it real clear to Xi Jinping that we’re going to compete fully with China, but we’re not looking for conflict. That’s been the case so far.”
Biden’s response marks the second time this week that he’s sought to downplay the effect of what US officials deemed a “brazen” act by Beijing to send an intelligence gathering balloon across several US states – with signs it loitered over key military installations.
Biden, who ordered the US military to shoot down the balloon over open water last week, said he has not spoken to the Chinese leader since the balloon was spotted. But he pointed to continued contacts between officials in his administration and their Chinese counterparts.
US officials registered their objections to Chinese officials while the balloon was in flight. They also communicated with Chinese officials after the balloon was shot down, according to senior administration officials.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed a high-stakes trip to Beijing due to the balloon incursion, undercutting a key element of Biden’s first face-to-face meeting with Xi in November. That meeting was designed to cool tensions that had been rising between the two powers throughout Biden’s opening weeks in office, with Blinken’s follow-up visit to China considered the next marker in the effort.
Biden administration officials have stressed that the meeting was not canceled, but instead…
Read the full article here
