Balloon turbulence deepens US-China discord
ON February 3, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called up Wang Yi, Director of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission, to tell him that he was postponing his scheduled trip to China as by sending a balloon over the US airspace, China had indulged in an “irresponsible act and this action is detrimental to the substantive discussions” that they were prepared to have. He said the trip would be rescheduled once the balloon turbulence was over.
However, Wang said it was a civilian airship sent for meteorological research and had accidentally strayed from its planned course into US airspace due to strong westerly winds and its limited self-steering capacity. “China is a responsible country and has always strictly abided by the international law,” he added.
But the Americans found that the balloon, which entered the US air defence zone north of the Aleutian islands on January 28, moved largely over land across Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Carolinas and then towards the Atlantic Ocean. The balloon had flown over certain sensitive sites to collect information, including over Montana, which is home to about 150 intercontinental ballistic missile silos.
Typically, the balloons fly above 80,000 to 1,00,000 ft, but the one sent by China was flying low enough at about 60,000 ft to be noticed by the civilians. The journey of the balloon over so many days over the US landmass provoked widespread anger and many questions such as why it was detected so late by the defence authorities, were there gaps in the US security which permitted the balloon to fly undetected, why the Chinese took such a brazen step a few days ahead of Blinken’s planned trip and what intelligence it had collected.
It is common for countries such as the US, China and others to conduct surveillance on their adversaries, but it is done discreetly. According to media reports, China had conducted similar surveillance on military assets of Japan, India, Vietnam, the Philippines and Taiwan earlier.
US President Joe Biden’s political adversaries, the Republicans, had a ready fodder to attack him asking why he had not shared the information with the people before the balloon was noticed by the civilians, why he had delayed its shooting, why the sensors in the US airspace had failed to detect this balloon and what if such balloons were used by the US’s adversaries to send nuclear or other explosives into the country to cripple sensitive installations.
Pentagon’s defence that there had been other instances of similar balloons flying over the US airspace during the Trump administration (which were detected later) made matters worse, some saying that Biden was too soft towards China. There was a consensus that Blinken’s visit could not be permitted till the investigation into the debris of the balloon shot down on February 6 was complete. Also, that China could not be allowed to violate the US sovereign territory without paying a cost.
The Chinese government was equally aggressive. China’s vice foreign minister Xie Feng in a representation to the US Embassy in Beijing said this was “entirely an accident caused by force majeure and the US deliberately exaggerated it. Its armed attacks on the balloon were irresponsible and unacceptable”. Also that Beijing reserved the right to respond similarly to future incidents of this kind.
Various theories are doing rounds on why China indulged in such a brazen and risky adventure few days before Blinken’s visit. Most plausible one is that China had got tired of aggressive actions by the US before each high-level meeting, sanctioning or blacklisting some Chinese organisations, companies and officials. There has been a sharp increase in the US provocations against China in recent days, including the sailing of the USS Chancellorsville, a guided missile cruiser, in the South China Sea to exercise the freedom of navigation, approval of $10-billion weapon sales to Taiwan, setting up of a House Select Committee on China (which distinction even the old Soviet Union did not get) targeting Beijing. The USA’s encouragement of Japan’s militarisation, new alliance to prohibit the sale of microchips to China, setting up of a new military base in China’s vicinity in Guam and acquiring four new bases in the Philippines had also come to Beijing’s adverse notice.
Some Chinese leaders believed that the US had pushed China on the back foot by these military and economic initiatives and was trying to clip China’s wings and even preparing for a war. There was a view that high-level meetings with US officials had become a ritual with glorified photo opportunities and Washington was not taking Beijing seriously. By sending the balloon, China wanted to convey a message of strength that it was capable of reaching the heart of the US mainland and Washington would have to take into account China’s concerns if it sincerely wanted a dialogue on establishing peace and cooperation with it.
As the US-China rivalry deepens, the asymmetry in their thinking and mutual perceptions has only worsened. While the US considers itself as the sole superpower and the guardian of the present international order, China considers itself to be an equal and wants enough space from Washington to accommodate its interests. The latter does not accept China’s claim and believes that if Beijing wishes to benefit from its economic, trade and technological cooperation, it should stop behaving as a rival and accept its terms.
Given the wide disparities in their outlook, the balloon incident will further strain the Sino-US relationship with growing political consensus in the US to pushback China in political, economic, technological and military realms. If the investigation into the debris of the balloon reveals that China had intended to collect sensitive information about the US strategic installations, there would be demands to make Beijing pay for indulging in this effrontery. Given that Chinese President Xi Jinping revels in aggressive policies, any further US sanctions would only harden China’s opposition to US policies.
