The US and China are pushing countries to pick sides in their ballooning rivalry – but some say no

The escalating dispute over a downed Chinese surveillance balloon has once again left many countries stuck in the middle of the world's two largest economies.

HONG KONG — A large balloon may be a novel cause of strife between two major powers, but the escalating dispute has put many countries in a familiar position: Stuck in the middle of the United States and China, and not happy about it.

Like so many clashes between Washington and Beijing, the downing of a Chinese surveillance balloon by the US military has rippled across the world.

Diplomatic competition between China and the US has been intensifying from Africa to the Pacific with deals on trade and military bases, while both seek to persuade existing allies to re-evaluate their ties with the other side. For many countries, however, the balloon saga is just the latest tricky issue to navigate as they try to balance relations with the world’s two largest economies.

That may explain why Southeast Asia has been relatively silent on the balloon incident, said Collin Koh, a research fellow at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “Even if you consider that some countries might have encountered similar sightings, they are not inclined to talk about it,” he said, “because they do not want to be drawn into what they see as Sino-US rivalry.”

US officials say Chinese surveillance balloons have crossed over dozens of countries across five continents. They have briefed countries on the issue in recent days, prompting some to re-evaluate past sightings of unidentified aerial objects in their own territory. Fears over high-altitude balloons may not land as hard in Asia, where China is building artificial islands in the South China Sea, clashing with foreign vessels and sending warplanes toward Taiwan almost daily. Taiwan, a self-ruling island that Beijing claims as its territory, has largely played down any balloon threat. The response from Southeast Asia has been similarly low-key.

Many countries in Asia and beyond also see US-China tensions as standing in the way of progress on issues of global importance like climate change and public health, and have urged greater communication.

Many countries view the world as increasingly multipolar and are seeking to diversify their diplomatic ties, said Madiha Afzal, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “They don’t see this world as being led by China or led by the US only,” she said. “It benefits them to have relationships on both sides.”

Talk of an emerging cold war between the US and China has raised suggestions of a new “nonaligned movement” of countries that hope to stay out of it. During the decades long conflict between the US and the Soviet Union, 120 mostly developing countries — many of them newly independent — established a loose coalition by that name that is now one of the largest international forums in the world.

Countries torn between the US and China are reluctant to choose sides mainly for economic reasons. Balakrishnan, the Singaporean foreign minister, argued for a new “nonaligned movement” at a conference late last year, emphasising the importance of international cooperation. “I don’t believe any self-respecting Asian country wants to be trapped, or to be a theater for proxy battles,” he said.