U.S. seeks Chinese balloon remnants, says approach to China will stay
calm
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[February 07, 2023]
By David Shepardson, Jeff Mason and Yew Lun Tian
WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) -The U.S. Coast Guard on Monday imposed a
temporary security zone in waters off South Carolina during the
military's search for debris from a suspected Chinese spy balloon shot
down by a U.S. fighter jet, and the White House said it would keep a
calm approach to relations with Beijing.
President Joe Biden told reporters it was always his view that the
balloon needed to be shot down and brushed off a question about whether
the incident would weaken U.S-China relations.
"No. We made it clear to China what we're going to do," he said. "They
understand our position. We're not going to back off. We did the right
thing and it's not a question of weakening or strengthening - it's
reality."
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said the balloon's
flight over the United States had done nothing to improve already tense
relations with China and dismissed Beijing's contention it was for
meteorological purposes.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre nevertheless said the
U.S. approach to relations with China would remain calm and it was up to
China to decide whether it wanted to build on a meeting between Biden
and Chinese President Xi Jinping last November.
"It's up to China to figure out what kind of relationship they want,"
she said.
The appearance of the Chinese balloon caused a political uproar in the
United States and prompted the top U.S. diplomat, Antony Blinken, to
cancel a Feb. 5-6 trip to Beijing that both countries hoped would steady
their rocky relations.
Beijing condemned the shooting down of the balloon as an "obvious
overreaction" and urged Washington to show restraint.
"China firmly opposes and strongly protests against this," Vice Foreign
Minister Xie Feng said in remarks to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing posted
on the ministry's website.
When asked on Tuesday whether China had asked the United States to
return the debris from the downed balloon, Chinese foreign ministry
spokesperson Mao Ning said the balloon belonged to China.
"This balloon is not American. The Chinese government will continue to
defend its legitimate rights and interests," she said at a regular
presser.
Mao also said she did not have more information on what equipment the
balloon was carrying.
The ministry said on Monday that China learned its balloon had drifted
over the United States after being notified by Washington.
While urging U.S. restraint, China has also warned of "serious
repercussions" and said it will use the necessary means to deal with
"similar situations," without elaborating. Some policy analysts said
they expect any response to be finely calibrated, however, to prevent
diplomatic ties becoming even worse.
Some U.S. Republicans have questioned why the balloon was not shot down
before it was allowed to travel across the United States. Biden asked
for military options last Tuesday, according to U.S. officials, but
Pentagon officials said the risks were too great to shoot it down over
land.
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A jet flies by a suspected Chinese spy
balloon after shooting it down off the coast in Surfside Beach,
South Carolina, U.S. February 4, 2023. REUTERS/Randall Hill
"Once it came over the United States from Canada, I told the Defense
Department I wanted to shoot it down as soon as it was appropriate,"
Biden told reporters. "They concluded ... we should not shoot it
down over land. It was not a serious threat and we should wait until
it got across the water."
After first passing into U.S. airspace north of Alaska's Aleutian
Islands on Jan. 28, the balloon was downed off the U.S. Atlantic
Coast on Saturday - a week later.
Kirby said Blinken would seek to reschedule his trip, the first by a
U.S. secretary of state to Beijing since 2018, when the time was
right. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Washington and
Beijing had not had conversations about this.
INTELLIGENCE GATHERING
U.S. officials have played down the balloon's impact on national
security, but say a successful recovery could give the United States
insight into China's spying capabilities.
Kirby said United States was able to study the balloon while it was
aloft and officials hope to glean valuable intelligence on its
operations by retrieving as many components as possible.
Senior U.S. officials have offered to brief former Trump
administration officials on the details of what the White House said
were three China balloon overflights when Donald Trump was
president. U.S. officials said those balloons came to light after
Trump left office in January 2021 and was succeeded by Biden.
A senior U.S. general responsible for bringing down the balloon said
on Monday the military had not detected previous spy balloons before
the one that appeared on Jan. 28 over the United States and called
it an "awareness gap."
However, Air Force General Glen VanHerck, head of U.S. North
American Aerospace Defense Command and Northern Command, said U.S.
intelligence determined the previous flights after the fact based on
"additional means of collection" of intelligence without offering
further details on whether that might be cyber espionage, telephone
intercepts or human sources.
Chinese foreign ministry said another balloon, spotted over Latin
America, was an unmanned civilian airship on a test flight that
"severely deviated and unintendedly entered the space above Latin
America because it was affected by the weather and because it has
limited self-steering capability."
On Sunday, Colombia's military said it sighted an airborne object
similar to a balloon after the Pentagon said on Friday another
Chinese balloon was flying over Latin America.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali, David Shepardson, Steve
Holland, Trevor Hunnicut, Susan Heavey, David Lawder, Kanishka
Singh, Gram Slattery, Andy Sullivan, David Brunnstrom, Huneyra Pamuk
and Simon Lewis in Washington and Yew Lun Tian, Bernard Orr Tony
Munroe and Eduardo Baptista in Beijing; Editing by Nick Macfie, Don
Durfee, Grant McCool, Lincoln Feast and Michael Perry)
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