Chinese spy balloon over America leads to Blinken cancellation of Beijing trip

The United States Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken cancelled a weekend trip to Beijing after a Chinese spy balloon was sighted above the Rocky Mountain state of Montana, igniting a frenzy of media coverage.

The Pentagon said the baloon posed no threat to the United States, but Blinken called the Chinese surveillance an “irresponsible act” and a “clear violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law.”

China’s “decision to take this action on the eve of my planned visit is detrimental to the substantive discussions that we were prepared to have,” he said at a news conference on Friday afternoon.

Blinken cancelled the trip after civilians in Montana this week spotted the balloon, which the Pentagon said was an “intelligence-gathering” airship.

Blinken and a deputy secretly confronted Chinese diplomats in Washington on Wednesday. But it became a diplomatic crisis only as media attention mounted on Thursday night and Republican politicians called for President Joe Biden and Blinken to act.

Blinken said he called Wang Yi, China’s top foreign policy official, on Friday and said he was postponing his trip because of the balloon.

Wang told Blinken in a phone call late on Friday that “China is a responsible country and has always strictly abided by international law,” the Chinese foreign ministry said on its website.

By midday on Friday, the balloon had reached Kansas, where it was sometimes hovering and sometimes moving at speeds of up to 70 miles an hour, Pentagon officials said. The United States was using its own surveillance methods to monitor and study the machine, including deploying aircraft.

Biden may yet decide to shoot it down, a Pentagon official said, but he will likely not do so until the balloon is above water, probably over the Atlantic Ocean, given the southeasterly direction it has been heading.

Pentagon officials said that while other surveillance balloons have hovered over the United States in recent years, this one has lingered longer than any of the previous ones.

The Chinese government expressed its regret over the incident on Friday and asserted that the balloon was for civilian research and had “deviated far from its planned course.”