US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with China's top foreign affairs official Wang Yi on Saturday, stressing that the US will not tolerate any violation of our sovereignty. It was the first face-to-face exchange between top US and Chinese officials since the US military shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon earlier this month.
A press release issued by the State Department indicated that Secretary Blinken directly addressed the unacceptable behavior of Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloons in US airspace that violated US sovereignty and violated international law, stressing that such irresponsible behavior "must not happen again."
Secretary of State Blinken revealed in a later interview that Wang Yi "did not apologize for the spy balloons hovering over the United States" during the meeting.
"There was no apology," Blinken said in an interview on NBC News' "Meet the Press." "But what I can also tell you is that this is an opportunity to speak very clearly and very directly about the fact that China launched surveillance balloons over our territory, violating our sovereignty and violating international law."
“I told him very directly that this was unacceptable and it should never happen again,” Blinken said.
The incident has caused a stir in the United States since the suspected Chinese spy balloon entered US airspace earlier this month and was shot down on February 4 over Billings, Montana. Washington accused it of being a spy balloon, part of an expanding fleet of surveillance balloons in China. However, Beijing strongly denied this, saying it was a civil unmanned aircraft that veered off its intended route and drifted into the skies over the United States.
The US State Department said Secretary Blinken again made clear in a meeting with Wang Yi on Saturday that "China's high-altitude surveillance balloon program, which has violated the airspace of more than 40 countries on five continents, has been exposed to the world. "
"Seeing is better than never seeing," Wang Feiling, a professor at Georgia Tech's Nunn School of International Affairs, told VOA. He said the two sides have at least made a gesture but do not hold out much hope of substantive détente. "The downward trend in Sino-US relations is already the result of the promotion of various forces on both sides, and it is no longer something that can be changed with one or two meetings."
Before the meeting with Blinken, Wang Yi, director of China's Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, delivered an unusually sharp criticism of the United States at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, reiterating that the balloon was an "airship unmanned civilian". of which he said that the crisis "is actually a political farce created by the United States." He said the shooting down of the high-altitude balloon that the United States believed could gather intelligence on the most sensitive US military base was "incredible, bordering on hysteria and 100% indiscriminate use of force."
In the days after the downing of the Chinese balloon, US warplanes shot down three other objects over North America that US officials now say they believe are harmless and probably not from China. "There are many balloons floating above the earth every day," said Wang Yi. "America is going to fight?"
The United States has now recovered the remains of the Chinese spy balloon, and authorities said Friday that analysis of the debris so far has further bolstered the conclusion that it was a Chinese spy balloon. The military believes the balloon that was shot down over the waters near South Carolina was a Chinese surveillance blimp. But on the other hand, some key questions remain unanswered, such as whether intelligence was gathered while the balloon was flying over sensitive military sites in the United States and whether the balloon was able to transmit information to China.
Relations between the United States and China were already widely considered to be at a rare low point in the decades before the balloon crisis, and this incident has further worsened relations between the two countries.
Wang Feiling, an expert on China affairs, said the balloon incident aroused a strong reaction in the US public, and although the leaders of the two sides met, their statements and the statements of diplomats are of little importance in reversing the tension. between the two countries. , "because the damage has been irreparable."
Ahead of Secretary Blinken's meeting with Wang Yi, President Biden delivered his first official White House address this week in an event that has reverberated across the United States, vowing to "defend our country with action." President Biden also emphasized: "I will not apologize for shooting down that balloon."
