BEIJING, 7 Feb: China said Tuesday it will \u201cresolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests\u201d over the shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon by the United States, as relations between the two countries deteriorate further.
\nThe balloon prompted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a highly-anticipated visit to Beijing this week that had offered slight hopes for an improvement in relations.
\nChina claims it was a civilian balloon used for meteorological research but has refused to say to which government department or company it belongs.
\nForeign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Tuesday reiterated that the \u201cunmanned airship\u201d posed no threat and entered U.S. airspace accidentally.
\nMao again criticized the U.S. for overreacting rather than adopting a \u201ccalm, professional\u201d manner, and for using force in bringing the balloon down Saturday in the Atlantic Ocean just off the U.S. coast.
\nAsked if China wanted the debris returned, she only reasserted that the balloon \u201cbelongs to China.\u201d
\n\u201cThe balloon does not belong to the U.S. The Chinese government will continue to resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,\u201d Mao said at a daily briefing without giving further details.
\nBeijing\u2019s attitude has hardened considerably following a surprisingly mild initial response on Friday, in which it described the balloon\u2019s presence as an accident and expressed \u201cregret\u201d for the balloon having entered the U.S.
\nSubsequent statements have grown firmer, in the same tone used to confront the U.S. over issues from Taiwan to trade, technology restrictions and China\u2019s claim to the South China Sea. China says it lodged a formal complaint with the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, accusing Washington of having \u201cobviously overreacted and seriously violated the spirit of international law and international practice.\u201d
\nRecent developments have laid bare the extremely fragile nature of what many had hoped could be a manageable economic, political and military rivalry.
\nU.S.-China tensions have stirred deep concern in Washington and among many of its allies. They worry that outright conflict could have a strong negative impact on the global economy, especially since Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine last year, on which China has largely sided with Moscow.
\nBalloons either suspected of or confirmed to be Chinese have been spotted over countries from Japan to Costa Rica. Taiwanese media have reported that mysterious white balloons had been spotted over the island at least three times in the past two years.
\nThat\u2019s especially concerning because China claims Taiwan as its own territory to be brought under its control by force if necessary and routinely sends warships and military aircraft into the island\u2019s air defense identification zone and across the middle line of the Taiwan Strait dividing the sides.
\nTaiwan\u2019s Ministry of National Defense has never explicitly linked the balloons to China. However, the recent furor over the Chinese balloon in the U.S. brought attention back to these mysterious sightings.
\nThe size of the Chinese balloon in the U.S., as well as the equipment attached to it, had all drawn intense speculation as to its purpose. Along with Washington, most security experts dismissed Beijing\u2019s assertions that the balloon was intended for meteorological rather than spying purposes.
\nBut it doesn\u2019t look like any weather balloon that Cheng Ming-dian, head of Taiwan\u2019s Central Weather Bureau, has seen.
\n\u201cIn the meteorology world, I haven\u2019t found a person who has seen or heard of a weather balloon that looks like this,\u201d Cheng said. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIJING, 7 Feb: China said Tuesday it will \u201cresolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests\u201d over the shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon by the United States, as relations between the two countries deteriorate further. The balloon prompted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a highly-anticipated visit to Beijing this week […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-210431","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}