U.S. rejects Beijing claim it flew balloons over China
STORY: China on Monday accused the U.S. of flying its own high-altitude balloons through China's airspace more than ten times in the past year, an allegation Washington swiftly denied.
The claim comes after the U.S. said China sent a surveillance balloon through American airspace earlier this month, an incident sparking outrage in Washington, and leading to intense focus on what is flying in the sky.
Monday's allegation from a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson did not detail whether the alleged American balloons were military or for espionage purposes, and did not present any evidence to support the claim.
WANG WENBIN: "Just since last year, the U.S.'s high-altitude balloons illegally entered Chinese airspace more than 10 times without the approval of the relevant Chinese authorities. The first thing the U.S. side should do is start with a clean slate, undergo some self-reflection, instead of smearing and accusing China."
But the U.S. said the allegations were completely without merit. In a statement, a spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council said, "any claim that the U.S. government operates surveillance balloons over the PRC (People's Republic of China) is false," and dismissing the accusation as an effort at damage control by Beijing.
The Chinese claim broadens a high-flying spying dispute between the globe's two largest economies that burst into the public eye earlier this month, when a large inflatable object drifted over Alaska, Canada, and the continental U.S. before it was shot down by an American fighter jet over the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
Washington said it was a Chinese surveillance balloon, calling it violation of U.S. sovereignty. Beijing said the object was for civilian meteorological purposes that went off-course and called the shoot-down an overreaction.
In recent days, the U.S. military said it has shot down three other flying objects over North America, most recently on Sunday, when an octagonal object was downed over Lake Huron.
Those objects are so far unidentified and were all significantly smaller than the Chinese balloon, which U.S. officials described as more than a hundred feet tall.
