China’s top diplomat has lashed out at the US, calling Washington’s decision to shoot down balloons in American airspace “hysterical and absurd”.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Wang Yi, who holds the top foreign policy position in China’s communist party, said the shooting “ignored basic facts” and was evidence that the US had made a strategic miscalculation regarding China.
“All over the world there are many balloons from many countries. Do you want to shoot one by one?” Wang said. “This does not show that the US is strong. On the contrary, it shows the opposite. We urge the US to refrain from such preposterous acts in order to divert attention from domestic issues.
Wang also said Beijing would come up with a new peace proposal to end the war in Ukraine that would respect the “sovereignty of all countries”.
He added that in order to maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan independence forces must be opposed.
The balloon row has heightened US-China tensions. The US said it suspected the balloon was for surveillance after it spent a week flying over the US and Canada, before being shot down over the Atlantic earlier this month on the orders of US President Joe Biden. Beijing has denied this.
Western officials now believe the balloon may have disappeared. Biden said on Friday that he plans to speak with Chinese president Xi Jinping to “listen” to the incident, although he did not specify when.
US-China relations and the threat to European security by Russian aggression have dominated the Munich Security Conference, where senior foreign policy, defense and intelligence officials from the west have gathered for three days of meetings on the eve of the first anniversary. Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Western leaders have urged China to use its voice at the UN to condemn the war, but so far China has maintained a studiously neutral public position. Last year, just 20 days before the invasion, president Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin struck on what they called “borderless relations”.
Wang said that China is “not immediately concerned about the conflict, but it is not stopping” and that Beijing will issue a position paper on how to find a political solution.
“The position paper will repeat President Xi’s position,” Wang said. Among them, “the territorial integrity of the country must be maintained.” . . security issues need to be addressed. . . nuclear war should not be a war. . .[and]we oppose attacks on nuclear power stations to prevent a nuclear disaster,” he said.
Russian forces have taken control of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, since storming and taking it last March.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, which has called for a military safe zone to be established around the plant, has warned that the threat of a nuclear accident there remains very high.