Editor’s note for February 13, 2023
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
My thoughts today:
The balloons, or unidentified flying objects keep coming. The U.S. and Canada shot down some high altitude equipment over the weekend, and today China’s Foreign MInistry accused the U.S. of sending balloons into Chinese airspace at least 10 times in the last year. The top trending search on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok today was “U.S. flew high-altitude balloons illegally more than 10 times over Chinese airspace.”
Our top story today covers the latest flying irritants to vex Washington and Beijing, and accusations from the Philippines Coast Guard that a Chinese vessel pointed a military-grade laser at it.
But today a U.S. official told news media that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is considering meeting China’s highest-ranked diplomat, Wáng Yì 王毅, at the Munich Security Conference later this week. That would be their first face-to-face meeting since Blinken’s trip to China was called off after the appearance of the first balloon.
It’s unlikely anyone will be singing “kumbaya.”
