Beijing.- China claimed that several US balloons had entered its airspace since January 2022, in response to accusations by Washington that Beijing has sent such devices to spy on US territory.
For its part, the White House denied the accusations.
“Any claim that the US government operates surveillance balloons over the People’s Republic of China is false,” National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said on her Twitter account.
“It is China that has a high-altitude surveillance balloon program for intelligence gathering, which it has used to violate the sovereignty of the United States and more than 40 countries on five continents.”
Relations between the United States and China have further soured after Washington on February 4 shot down a suspected Chinese spy device, which Beijing said was for civilian purposes.
Other such devices flying over the United States and Canada have since been shot down, although Beijing has only admitted that the first was its own.
This weekend, Chinese state media reported that an unidentified flying object had been sighted off the country’s east coast, and that the military was preparing to shoot it down.
Beijing refused to comment on that information and limited itself to referring the journalists to the Ministry of Defense, which did not respond to questions from AFP. But the government did accuse the United States of sending more than ten balloons into its airspace since January 2022.
“It is not uncommon for the United States to illegally enter other countries’ airspace,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters.
“In the last year alone, American balloons have flown over China more than 10 times without any authorization.”
Asked how China responded to the alleged incursions, Wang said Beijing’s “management was responsible and professional.”
“If you want to know more about US high-altitude balloons illegally entering China’s airspace, I suggest you refer to the US side.”
Caution
The United States increased surveillance of its airspace as the number of air raids increases, which Beijing denied knowledge of on Monday.
The Pentagon said Sunday it still does not know what three other objects were shot down: one on Friday over Alaska, another on Saturday over Canada’s Yukon Territory and the most recent on Sunday over Lake Huron.
Authorities did say the object shot down Sunday had been tracked for nearly a day and did not resemble the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that was destroyed off the Atlantic coast on February 4 after passing through the country.
President Joe Biden ordered an F-16 fighter to shoot down the last object “out of an abundance of caution,” a senior administration official said.
The object was described by the official as an octagonal structure from which ropes hung.
It was drifting about 20,000 feet above Michigan and could have posed a danger to civil aviation, according to the official.
For his part, General Glen VanHerck, head of the United States Northern Command, told the press that after sending planes to inspect the most recent object, they concluded that there were no indications of any threat, as with previous objects. .
“What we’re seeing are very, very small objects that produce a very, very low radar cross section,” he said.
Although he declined to describe the shape or size of the objects, he said they moved very slowly, at the speed of the wind.
Speculations about its nature have skyrocketed in recent days.
“I’ll let the intelligence community and the counterintelligence community figure it out,” VanHerck said.
