After The Balloon: Where US-China Relations Go Next

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🗓️ 6 February 2023

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

China and the US were supposed to hold diplomatic talks over the weekend. Instead they sparred over a Chinese balloon that entered American airspace before it was shot down. Where do relations between Washington and Beijing go from here?

This wasn't the first time a Chinese surveillance balloon flew into into U.S. airspace. NPR's Greg Myre talks us through past incidents.

Then we speak with Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China and Asia Pacific Studies at Cornell University, about where U.S. and China relations now stand.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Chase Doke was getting ready to leave his office in Billings, Montana on Wednesday
0:05.6	when he looked out the window.
0:07.2	And I just spotted this white circle in the sky.
0:11.7	It caught my attention because it was still broad daylight and I knew that the stars couldn't be out.
0:16.9	He ran outside to his car to grab his camera along with his most powerful lens.
0:21.1	And then he started snapping photos of the mysterious object.
0:25.3	What it looked like was a tiny moon that was sort of in the middle of an eclipse is the best way I could describe it.
0:32.6	That tiny moon in the sky turned out to be a very big deal.
0:38.6	We begin tonight with the breaking headline late today, the Pentagon briefing reporters just before we came on the air
0:43.8	saying they are now tracking a suspected Chinese spy balloon hovering over the northern US.
0:49.0	We were in the newscast spot.
0:50.1	We got it earlier this week on Thursday over Montana. Today a lot of people over Missouri, Kansas City, St. Louis saw it and tonight we think we know where it is.
0:59.7	China's foreign affairs ministry eventually confirmed that the balloon was indeed from China.
1:05.2	But they called it a quote civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological purposes.
1:12.2	And they claimed this one had merely accidentally gone off course.
1:17.3	The US officials rejected that description. They said they knew it was a surveillance balloon used to collect information from sensitive sites.
1:25.5	Now this was all playing out ahead of a planned diplomatic trip by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing.
1:32.6	The trip was seen as an opportunity for China and the US to ease tensions between them.
1:38.2	But Blinken decided to call it off at the last minute.
1:41.8	China's decision to fly a surveillance balloon over the continental United States.
1:47.2	It is both unacceptable and irresponsible. That's what this is about.
1:51.4	It's a violation of our sovereignty. It's a violation of international law.
	...

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