Editor’s note for February 3, 2023
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
Dear reader,
Last night, the Pentagon announced it had been tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that came from China and was drifting over the continental United States for a few days. Yesterday, it was hovering over Montana.
Naturally, there were immediate calls for Joe Biden to shoot the balloon down, including from Twitter user and Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, although she did not specify if Jewish space lasers should be used. However, Biden decided not to blast it out of the sky, under the “strong recommendation” of senior military leaders due to the risk to safety of people on the ground.
This morning, the Chinese Foreign Ministry put out a statement:
The airship is from China. It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes. Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course. The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into U.S. airspace due to force majeure. The Chinese side will continue communicating with the U.S. side and properly handle this unexpected situation caused by force majeure.
However, many Chinese social media users seem doubtful about this explanation.
Whatever the case, the appearance of the balloon has put the kibosh on the upcoming visit to Beijing by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The White House said that while it was aware of China’s statement of regret, “it was not appropriate to travel to the People’s Republic of China at this time,” calling the presence of this balloon in U.S. airspace “a clear violation of our sovereignty as well as international law.”
Blinken’s visit was unlikely to have led to any significant breakthroughs or immediate changes in the deteriorating U.S.-China relationship, but that relationship is now a little worse than it was yesterday morning.
Our Phrase of the Week was recently used by a social media commentator about the police handling of the disappearance and death of a 15-year-old boy in Jiangxi Province: Where there’s smoke, there’s fire (事出反常必有妖 shì chū fǎncháng bì yǒu yāo).
