China urges calm over 'spy' balloon in US airspace – BBC News

US defense chiefs have identified what they say is a second Chinese surveillance

balloon

, this time over Latin America. The first

balloon

is floating across the American Midwest. Anthony Blinken, the United States Secretary of State, canceled a trip to Beijing and accused Chinese authorities of being irresponsible. China insists the balloon is a weather surveillance device that has veered off course over North America Correspondent Peter Bose reports on a surreal but increasingly serious international route This speck in the sky could be spying on the US. The Chinese balloon that has been floating over the country for several days China insists it is a platform to conduct climate-related research that has deviated from its path.

Beijing has apologized, but the US State Department says it stands by its assessment that the balloon is being used for surveillance and defense officials now say there is a second balloon we are Seeing reports of a balloon transiting Latin America, we now evaluate that it is another Chinese surveillance balloon. Anthony Blinken was due to be in Beijing this weekend for talks on a wide range of issues, including Taiwan's security and Covid-19, but he said that was no longer possible. Because the purpose of the trip to forge better relations between the two countries had been undermined, the presence of the surveillance balloon in US

airspace

is a clear violation of US sovereignty and the law internationally, is an irresponsible act and the PRC's decision to take this action on the planned visit is detrimental to the substantive discussions we were willing to have, Beijing said in a phone call on Friday evening.

His Chinese counterpart told Mr. Blinkum that accidental incidents needed to be addressed

calm

ly and professionally and that both sides needed to avoid errors in judgment. U.S. defense officials say the first balloon is still floating somewhere over the United States and they are keeping their options open. I can tell you that the balloon continues to move eastward and is currently over the center of the continental United States again, we currently assess that the balloon does not pose a military or physical threat to people on the ground at this time. Officials say the immediate goal is to get this balloon out of US

airspace

, Dubose BBC News, while our China correspondent Stephen McDonald. has been assessing Beijing's response if someone had asked us what the first major point of conflict between the United States and China will be this year.

I don't think many of us would have guessed that it was a balloon in our balloon series, but this is where we are now what we're getting from the Chinese side is that China's top foreign policy official a year ago had a phone call with Anthony Blinken and according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here I'm just reading a kind of reading of In that phone call he asked for stable communication to avoid errors of judgment regarding this globe. He also said that China would not accept any unfounded conjecture or exaggeration on the matter and in another written response from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs today they said that some politicians in the media in the US have exaggerated this matter.

China has done everything it can to say that this is a balloon that has accidentally veered off course, but you know that hasn't worked in terms of keeping the journey forward and imagine if you are an official in either Washington or Beijing who has been working on this trip, the hope that Anthony Blinken visiting Beijing this weekend would lead to some sort of breakthrough in terms of improving relations, instead we've postponed the trip and there's something worse than that. a new crisis point, so why do you think that leaves relationships now? Both sides will be keen to try to get things back on track as quickly as possible.

Yeah, I mean, I think well, look, imagine there's a number of things that could happen, just say that. The United States is able to seize this and determine that it actually appears to have been a weather balloon that had potentially veered off course. That, of course, would ease the tensions and then they could say, "Okay, well, let's get the trip back on track another time." Most likely they will decide well, you know, sure it's a weather balloon, but actually it could also be used for spying now, however, you know, of course, the United States buys from China, everyone spies on everyone, so What they could also do is let things happen.

calm

down a little and then maybe after the big political meeting here in March reschedule another date for Anthony Blinken to visit China and try once again to ease tensions between the world's two superpowers Stephen McDonald there much earlier I spoke with Sam Rogavine, who He is director of the International Security program at the Lowry Institute.

I asked him if he thought it was an accident, all deliberate. Ah, impossible to say. I certainly wouldn't take China's word that it was an accident. I guess what I would say is that even though espionage is an espionage mission that even if the method is somewhat novel, espionage itself is, of course, omnipresent throughout history and both sides in this dispute, The United States and China do it constantly, um, I guess The method is novel and therefore that's what caused this reaction. I think it's novel, but not very subtle, yes, exactly, and that makes me wonder about your first question about whether this was deliberate or a mistake, because whatever China might have hoped to gain in terms of intelligence value They don't seem to weigh much compared to the kind of risks he was taking and which had now become clear by the escalation of the diplomatic dispute between the two sides and was the US Secretary of State.

I have the right to cancel his visit to the light of this. I suspect there was a bit of internal politics at play here, from what I've seen the Republicans are doing a lot right now and will continue to visit whenever this issue is. making a lot of headlines in the United States would probably have had a pretty negative impact on the administration, so I guess I suspect domestic factors played a role. China has issued a rare statement of repentance here, hasn't it? What do you think is happening? I think maybe the Chinese side saw that the United States was taking this very seriously and was creating a lot of headlines and maybe this was something that they hadn't anticipated and was going to cause more damage. than they expected and maybe they wanted to save This Blink and visit it too uh it clearly hasn't worked out yeah I mean the visit is out of the question what does it mean in the short and long term for US-China relations? because, as you say, both nations spy on each other, they just hope that they are not right in the cause and we must remember that, I mean, it is unusual for planes to fly over each other's territory, but they certainly fly next to each other's territory and they fly Excuse me, they put satellites in space that go directly over each other's territory, so they do it constantly and in fact there is some evidence that the United States also has high altitude stealth drones in service that reach into the airspace of other nations, so it is quite common.

I suspect this is going to be a delay, a postponement of the blinking visit that won't be too long. I think the dust will settle and then we'll see Lincoln head out. out there again