WASHINGTON – US Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said relations with China were strained and the Biden administration is looking at other actions it can take after shooting down what it called a Chinese surveillance balloon over the weekend.
“Tense,” Schumer said when asked to describe the state of bilateral relations.
The appearance of the Chinese balloon over the United States last week caused a political uproar in Washington and prompted the top US diplomat, Antony Blinken, to cancel a Sunday-Monday tip to Beijing that both countries had hoped would steady their rocky relations.
China has said it was a weather balloon that had blown off course into US airspace and accused the United States of overreacting.
“I know the administration is looking at other actions that can be taken,” Schumer told reporters at the Capitol.
Speaking hours before fellow Democrat President Joe Biden was to deliver the annual State of the Union address to the US Congress, Schumer castigated Republican lawmakers for criticizing the President’s response to the balloon.
“China sent that surveillance balloon over. The Biden administration was calm, calculated and effective,” Schumer said.
“This is one area where we don’t need politics. So we need Democrats and Republicans to come together. We need the country to come together to condemn China for what it did, and have a unified front in dealing with the Chinese Communist Party.”
The White House has downplayed any drastic effect the balloon incident would have on US-China relations. Biden himself said on Monday that relations were not weakened by the downing of the balloon.
“No. We made it clear to China what we’re going to do. They understand our position.
We’re not going to back off.”
BRIEFINGS
A senior administration official and diplomats said on Tuesday the US held briefings in Washington and Beijing with foreign diplomats from 40 nations about the Chinese spy balloon.
US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman on Monday briefed nearly 150 foreign diplomats across 40 embassies, the official said, while in Beijing the US embassy gathered foreign diplomats on Monday and Tuesday to present US findings about the balloon.
“We want to make sure that we are sharing as much as we can with countries around the world who may also be susceptible to these types of operations,” the senior administration official said.
Sherman’s briefing was first reported by the Washington Post. The US State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A US Air Force fighter jet shot down the balloon off the South Carolina coast on Saturday, a week after it first entered US airspace.
The State Department also sent US missions around the world information about the balloon incident to share with allies and partners, the official added.
NOT A WEATHER BALLOON
In the briefings in Beijing, the United States presented information to demonstrate that the balloon, which entered US airspace in the last days of January and flew over US military sites, was not a weather research balloon as Beijing said but an airship that was used for espionage, said diplomats in Beijing who attended the discussions.
Washington said the balloon was controlled by the Chinese military, the People’s Liberation Army.
The diplomats at the Beijing briefing said they were told that the solar panels on the balloon meant that it needed more power than a weather balloon, and that its flight path did not conform with natural wind patterns. US officials have said the balloon was equipped with rudders and propellers.
“Based on the US briefing, our own understanding about such balloons and the fact that China has so far refused to name the company or entity that owns this balloon, we find it hard to believe it is a civilian weather balloon,” said a Beijing-based Asian defense diplomat.
The information was similar to what Pentagon has shared with reporters since the weekend, saying the balloons were part of a Chinese aerial fleet that has also violated the sovereignty of other countries.
The Washington Post reported that although analysts still do not know the size of the balloon fleet, one US official said there have been “dozens” of missions since 2018 and that the balloons use technology provided by a private Chinese company. — Reuters
