China inflated tensions Monday by claiming United States balloons have traveled into Chinese airspace more than 10 times since last year — an allegation the U.S. denies.
The claim comes a little over a week after U.S. fighter jets shot down a large balloon, suspected to be a Chinese surveillance device, near the coast of South Carolina.
“It is also common for U.S. balloons to illegally enter the airspace of other countries,” said Wang Wenbin, China’s foreign ministry spokesman. He said the U.S. should “first reflect on itself and change course, rather than smear and instigate a confrontation.”
China says its balloon was being used for “meteorological research,” not surveillance, and had blown off course when it was spotted. The U.S. rejected the accusation it sent spy balloons over China.
“It is China that has a high-altitude surveillance balloon program for intelligence collection, connected to the People’s Liberation Army, that it has used to violate the sovereignty of the United States and over 40 countries across five continents,” said Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for the National Security Council.
“This is the latest example of China scrambling to do damage control. It has repeatedly and wrongly claimed the surveillance balloon it sent over the United States was a weather balloon and to this day has failed to offer any credible explanations for its intrusion into our airspace and the airspace of others.”
Three more incidents involving unidentified objects occurred in North America after the Feb. 4 downing of the Chinese balloon.
U.S. pilots brought down one object in Alaska on Friday, another in Canada’s Yukon on Saturday and a third over Lake Huron on Sunday. Authorities are investigating the origin of those objects.