Blinken meets with Chinese official over balloon furor
MUNICH — Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with China’s top foreign policy official Saturday night in Munich, a State Department official said, a resumption of diplomacy between Washington and Beijing after a breakdown that followed the Biden administration’s downing of a Chinese spy balloon over U.S. territory.
The impromptu meeting happened while the two nations were still very much at odds. Hours earlier, the Chinese official, Wang Yi, had doubled down on China’s claim that the balloon was a “civilian” research craft blown off course by high winds, calling the U.S.’ decision to shoot it down “hysterical.”
The balloon episode has heightened U.S.-China tensions at a time when the relationship was already at one of its lowest points in decades. American officials say the balloon carried visible equipment that “was clearly for intelligence surveillance” as part of a global surveillance fleet directed by China’s military.
The meeting came two weeks after Blinken abruptly canceled a long-planned trip to Beijing when the United States detected the balloon floating across the country. The U.S. military eventually shot it down over the Atlantic Ocean. American officials said they were confident they had prevented it from collecting any sensitive data from U.S. nuclear sites and military bases.
The meeting between the two officials occurred at an annual security conference attended by dozens of world leaders and top diplomats. Communications between the powers had been on hold since Feb. 3, when Blinken canceled his trip to China hours before his planned departure.
The trip had been intended as a step toward soothing relations between the United States and China that have been inflamed in recent years, with some analysts worried about the growing potential for future military conflict. Blinken has said he will reschedule his visit to China “when conditions allow.”
The canceled trip and a subsequent war of words instead pointed to a new peak in Bidenera tensions. After President Joe Biden ordered the craft shot down over coastal waters off South Carolina, China rejected a request from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to speak with his Chinese counterpart — a development that U.S. officials called troubling.
China initially had a contrite tone about the balloon, saying that it was a weather craft that had drifted off course. But in the following days — especially after the U.S. military identified and shot down three other unknown objects that it now concedes were probably innocuous craft — Beijing’s tone hardened.
The United States may have irked Chinese officials by publicizing Beijing’s balloon surveillance over what Biden administration officials described as including dozens of other nations around the world.
Wang was defiant on the subject in his formal remarks at the Munich Security Conference earlier Saturday. He called the U.S.’ reaction an effort “to divert attention from its domestic problems.”
Wang said shooting down the balloon “does not show that the U.S. is strong. On the contrary, it shows the opposite.
“We asked the United States to handle it calmly and professionally based on consultation with the Chinese side,” Wang said. “Regrettably, the United States disregarded these facts and used advanced fighter jets and downed a balloon with its missiles.
“This is, I would say, absurd and hysterical. This is 100 percent an abuse of the use of force,” he said, adding that the United States had violated an international convention governing airspace.
Speaking in more general terms in his opening remarks, Wang warned that “a Cold War
recruiting convicts to fight in Ukraine.
“The opportunity to go there was viewed as a chance to avoid (serving) a lengthy term,” Pivovarov said, adding that inmates were largely motivated by hopelessness.
In his facility, 150 men signed up, he said.
Asked whether there was any point in opposition activism in recent years, given that the Kremlin either imprisoned or drove most activists out of Russia Pivovarov said “there most certainly was,” but he acknowledged some things could have been done differently.
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