U.S Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday the United States has shared information it has obtained about China’s spy balloon with dozens of countries around the world.
Washington learning more ‘almost by the hour,’ diplomat says alongside NATO chief
Blinken also told a news conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg that he had discussed with him the systemic and tactical challenges China presents to the alliance.
Blinken said the United States was gaining more information “almost by the hour” on the balloon, which the United States shot down on Saturday, as salvage work progressed, and relevant findings would be shared with the U.S. Congress and U.S. allies and partners around the world.
Stoltenberg said the flight of the Chinese balloon confirmed a pattern of Chinese behavior and the need to be aware of the constant risk of Chinese intelligence activity. He also said China was “substantially” building up its military forces, including nuclear weapons, without any transparency.
When asked If Chinese leader Xi Jinping was aware of the balloon flights, Blinken said:
“As to who’s responsible for that, China is. And it doesn’t matter on one level, which individuals may or may not have been responsible. The fact is China engaged in this irresponsible action, a violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity and international law.”
It was earlier reported that, the Secretary of State Antony Blinken has postponed a planned high-stakes weekend diplomatic trip to China as the Biden administration weighs a broader response to the discovery of a high-altitude Chinese balloon flying over sensitive sites in the western United States, two diplomatic sources tell CBS News.
The decision came despite China’s claim that the balloon was a weather research satellite that had blown off course. The U.S. has described it as a surveillance satellite.
The trip was called off just hours before Blinken was due to depart Washington for Beijing and heightened the strain on U.S.-Chinese relations. On Friday morning, Blinken told his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, that the trip would need to be postponed, but he intends to visit at a future date.
By Friday morning, the balloon was no longer over Montana but had moved over the Midwest, according to a U.S. official. It’s not going to run out of fuel, since it has solar panels. The official also said that the balloon steers by rudder and is corkscrewing around to slow its progress over land, but the jet stream continues to move it on a trajectory across the U.S. The Pentagon is still considering ways to “dispose” of it but has “grave concerns” about the damage it would cause if it fell to earth. U.S. government lawyers regard this as a violation of U.S. air space.
Blinken’s long-anticipated meetings with senior Chinese officials had been seen in both countries as a way to find some areas of common ground amid major 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, which was agreed to in November by Mr. Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at a summit in Indonesia, had not been formally announced, officials in both Beijing and Washington had been talking in recent days about Blinken’s imminent arrival. In November, Mr. Biden and Xi discussed maintaining “open lines of communication” amid increasing tensions between the countries. Mr. Biden has described the U.S. relationship with China as one of strategic competition.
The meetings were to begin on Sunday and go through Monday.
