It appears to be peacefully floating across American airspace, but on the ground the suspected use of a spy balloon has triggered a diplomatic maelstrom, and experts say it has undermined efforts to repair relations between the U.S. and China.
“This incident is incredibly embarrassing for Beijing. It reinforces concerns that most Western nations justifiably harbor about China’s great power ambitions,” Craig Singleton, a senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, D.C., think tank, told NBC News Saturday.
He added that Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s decision on Friday to indefinitely postpone his visit to China had defeated what would have been a “huge propaganda win” for Beijing, “in essence signaling that America has dispatched its top envoy to China and not the other way round.”
Blinken, who had been scheduled to depart Washington for Beijing late Friday, said he had told senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi in a phone call that sending the balloon over the U.S. was “an irresponsible act and that (China’s) decision to take this action on the eve of my visit is detrimental to the substantive discussions that we were prepared to have.” Blinken’s visit would have been the first to China by a U.S. secretary of state since 2018.
Now “Chinese officials are finding themselves in damage control mode,” Singleton said.
First spotted over Montana, which is home to one of America’s three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base, the massive white orb, which is about the size of three school buses, has been heading southeastward over Kansas and Missouri at 60,000 feet.
Describing it as a “high-altitude surveillance balloon,” Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Thursday that the “government acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information.” Asked why the U.S. did not shoot down the balloon, Ryder said the government had ruled it out because of…
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