China urges restraint as US searches for wreckage of downed balloon

The balloon dispute further strained US-China relations and led to the postponement of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s planned visit to Beijing over the weekend.

A US fighter jet shot down a balloon over South Carolina on Saturday after the military tracked its movement over the continental United States. The Chinese authorities assessed that it was an “overreaction”. They also repeated several times that the balloon was used for scientific purposes and that it flew off the planned course.

“China firmly opposes and strongly protests this,” Vice Foreign Minister She Feng said in an address to the US Embassy in Beijing, which was published on the Ministry’s website.

The U.S. Navy is trying to find the remains of the balloon, and the Coast Guard is supporting the operation, military officials said Sunday.

If the operation is successful, the US could potentially gain insight into China’s espionage capabilities, although US officials downplay the balloon’s impact on national security.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Monday that China had discovered that the balloon had strayed over the US after being notified by US authorities.

“The inadvertent entry of that flying object (into the US) is a completely isolated, random incident. This tests the sincerity of the US in improving and stabilizing bilateral relations and how it resolves the crisis. We hope that the US will work with China to adequately resolve our differences, avoid miscalculations and misunderstandings and damage to our mutual trust,” said the spokeswoman of the Ministry.

She added that another balloon, located over Latin America, was an unmanned civilian flying object on a test flight that “diverged significantly and unintentionally entered the airspace over Latin America due to weather conditions and limited navigation capabilities.”

Colombia’s military said Sunday it had detected a balloon-like object after the Pentagon said Friday another Chinese balloon was flying over Latin America.

The balloon incident comes as the US and China try to improve communication and relations that have been strained in recent years by tensions on multiple fronts.

After the downing of the plane, China warned of “serious consequences” and that it would use all available means to resolve “similar situations”, without giving details.