Like most countries, China and the United States routinely spy against each other and this is tacitly understood as long as traditional patterns of espionage are maintained. The incident also increases the risk of escalation in the security realm. This will make it even harder to pursue mutual understanding and to avoid what many observers are already characterising as a ‘ new Cold War’. The balloon episode has also reinforced their exaggerated assessments of each other’s strategic intentions. Instead, both Washington and Beijing now appear inclined to treat the balloon episode as a new grievance to leverage against each other.Īll of this reflects the adversarial dynamic of the US–China relationship and both sides’ preoccupation with strategic competition at the expense of opportunities for cooperation. Both sides appear more inclined to score points against each other than to acknowledge their mistakes or make concerted efforts toward the kind of constructive bilateral engagement that Biden and Xi talked about when they met in November 2022. This mutual distrust and miscomprehension bodes ill for any US–China rapprochement, at least in the near term. When Blinken met with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi two weeks later at the Munich Security Conference, they accomplished little more than an exchange of complaints about how the balloon incident had been handled. In the meantime, alarm on the US side and evasion on the Chinese side allowed the situation to escalate, derailing what was supposed to have been a key opportunity for stabilising US–China relations. This was complicated by the false Chinese claim that the airship was a weather balloon, and Washington’s belated acknowledgment of the possibility that it had in fact drifted off course. We now know that this rapid sequence of events reflected a rush to judgment and action before the facts were clear. Beijing expressed ‘ strong dissatisfaction’ with this ‘use of force’ and accused Washington of ‘overreacting.’ On Saturday 4 February 2023, only 48 hours after the story broke, a US Air Force jet destroyed the balloon with an air-to-air missile. But US Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed a planned visit to Beijing, which was intended to be a follow up on discussions between Chinese and US leaders at the G20, on the grounds that China’s ‘clear violation of US sovereignty’ had ‘undermined the purpose of the trip.’ The next day, Beijing acknowledged that it was a Chinese weather balloon that had drifted off course and expressed ‘regrets’ for this ‘unintended’ and ‘unexpected situation’.
The presence of the balloon over US airspace was publicly revealed on Thursday 2 February. It is worth recalling the speed with which the episode unfolded. The episode displayed mutual distrust, latent hostility, a failure to communicate and the adverse impact of internal politics on how the two sides deal with each other. Washington and Beijing’s response to the appearance of a Chinese surveillance balloon over the United States in February 2023 illustrates several aspects of the current US–China relationship that will make it very difficult to reverse the downward spiral in bilateral ties. Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the PacificĪuthor: Paul Heer, Chicago Council on Global Affairs
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