US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has postponed a trip to China scheduled for Sunday (5) after tensions between the two countries rose significantly since the Pentagon announced the discovery of a balloon from the country flying over US territory, government sources said. to the local press.
The United States says the balloon is a spy instrument, while Beijing says it is weather research equipment that has gone off course.
Blinken was expected to meet with Chinese regime leader Xi Jinping. The trip was not cancelled, but postponed, without a new date having been established.
The balloon was first sighted in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, before passing over Canada and re-entering US airspace. On Wednesday, the object flew over Billings, Montana, where a military base with intercontinental ballistic missile silos is located. Washington decided not to shoot down the balloon, arguing that the item has limited intelligence-gathering capabilities and its debris could fall over civilian areas.
Military leaders considered dropping the artifact over the state of Montana, but ended up backing out of the decision. The balloon route would be taking the artifact to areas considered sensitive, including the Air Force base in Malmstrom, which houses 150 intercontinental ballistic missile silos.
This Friday (3), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Beijing declared in a note that the balloon was a civil aircraft used in research — meteorological in particular — that had deviated from its planned path due to winds. The statement still regrets the entry of the object into US airspace.
The episode drew criticism from Republican politicians. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy described the balloon as an example of “China’s brazen affront to American sovereignty”, an argument echoed by other congressmen of the same party. He said he would ask for a national security briefing on the situation to be held for a select group of members of both houses.
The moment was already tense between Washington and Beijing even before the incident, with the leak of a US memo last week in which General Mike Minihan, head of the Air Mobility Command of the country, said the two powers would fight a war in 2025. The reason would be an attempt by the Asian giant to take Taiwan by force, an island that it considers a rebel province.
Relations between China and the United States have been strained in recent years, especially after then-Mayor Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last year, the highest-ranking US official to set foot on the island in 25 years. . Beijing considers the island an inalienable part of its territory — just recognizing its government as autonomous would mean violating the “one China” policy and, therefore, the sovereignty of the Asian giant.
Since then, Washington and Beijing have tried to communicate more frequently to prevent further friction. In November, Biden and Xi Jinping held their first face-to-face meeting in Bali, Indonesia, before the G20 summit and showed signs of distension on both sides – even though both have marked their differences, with Beijing reinforcing a “red line” on Taiwan .
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