Secretary of State Antony Blinken has postponed a planned high-risk weekend diplomatic trip to China as the Biden administration considers a wider response to the discovery of a high-altitude Chinese balloon flying over a sensitive site in the western United States, US officials said Friday.
The sudden decision came despite China claiming the balloon was a weather research “airship” that had disappeared. The US has been described as a surveillance vehicle.
The development comes just before Blinken is set to leave Washington for Beijing and marks a new blow to already strained US-China relations.
President Joe Biden declined to comment when asked at an economic event. Two 2024 re-election challengers, former President Donald Trump, and Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, said the US should immediately shoot down the balloon.
The discovery of the balloons was announced by Pentagon officials who said that one of the places where they were found was in the state of Montana, which is home to one of the three American nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base.
A senior defense official said the US was preparing fighter jets, including F-22s, to shoot down the balloons if ordered. The Pentagon eventually recommended against it, saying that because the balloon was in a sparsely populated area of Montana, its size would have created a debris field large enough to put people at risk.
The official said the balloon was headed for a Montana missile field, but the U.S. has said it is of “limited” value in providing intelligence that China cannot obtain through other technologies, such as spy satellites.
Blinken had been ready until Thursday to travel to Beijing this weekend, but the government began reconsidering the trip after the balloon was found on Wednesday, even before it was made public, officials said.
The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the government had “taken note” of China’s expression of regret.
Senior defense officials did not discuss whether the U.S. accepts that it could be a weather balloon rather than a surveillance one, as U.S. officials have previously said. However, he said, the seriousness of the violation of US airspace, sovereignty and international law was such that Blinken’s trip could not go ahead as planned.
The official called the balloon’s presence “unacceptable” and said the message was sent by Blinken to State Councilor Wang Yi on Friday.
However, the official also said that Blinken had told the Chinese that he would be ready to travel to China “at the earliest opportunity if the situation permits.”
Blinken’s long-anticipated meetings with senior Chinese officials have been seen by both countries as a way to find some common ground at a time of disagreements over Taiwan, human rights, China’s claims in the South China Sea, North Korea, Russia’s war. in Ukraine, trade policy and climate change.
Although the trip, agreed in November by President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at a summit in Indonesia, has not been officially announced, officials in Beijing and Washington have spoken in recent days about Blinken’s arrival.
Meetings should start on Sunday and end on Monday.
The discovery shocked many people in Washington across the country and, in addition to the US protests filed by Chinese officials, it also drew strong criticism of the administration from Republican members of Congress who advocate taking a tougher stance with China.
China, which has angrily denounced U.S. and other surveillance efforts in areas it considers its territory and after forcing American spy planes to fly, reacted largely muted to the Pentagon’s announcement.
In a relatively conciliatory statement, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said recently that the balloon was a civilian aircraft used mainly for meteorological research. The ministry said the airship had limited its “self-steering” ability and was “deviating far from its planned course” due to strong winds.
“The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of an aircraft into US airspace due to force majeure,” the statement said, citing a legal term used to refer to events beyond its control.
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