US rules out returning balloon debris to China, Biden says relations not weakened

The United States is in the process of recovering debris from the Chinese balloon and there is no plan to give the remains back to Beijing, the White House said Monday.

“They have recovered some remnants off the surface of the sea and weather conditions did not permit much undersea surveillance of the debris field,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters, two days after a US fighter jet shot down the balloon, which had previously traversed the country.

US personnel will “in the coming days be able to get down there and take a better look at what’s on the bottom of the ocean, but it’s just started,” Kirby said, noting that the area where debris had scattered was “sizeable.”

On Sunday, Colombia’s military said it sighted an airborne object similar to a balloon after the Pentagon said on Friday another Chinese balloon was flying over Latin America.

US military fighter jet shot down the balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, a week after it first entered US airspace and triggered a dramatic spying saga that worsened Sino-US relations.

President Joe Biden said he had issued an order on Wednesday to take down the balloon. However, the Pentagon had recommended waiting until it could be done over open water to safeguard civilians from debris crashing to Earth from thousands of feet (meters) above commercial air traffic.

Multiple fighter and refueling aircraft were involved in the mission, but only an F-22 fighter jet from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia took the shot at 2.39 pm (US time).

CHINA APOLOGISES FOR BALLOON INCIDENT
Meanwhile, China apologised to Costa Rica for the balloon that flew over its territory. According to a brief statement from Costa Rica’s foreign ministry, the Chinese government recognised that one of its balloons flew over Costa Rica and China’s embassy in San Jose apologised for the incident, while insisting the balloon was focused on scientific research, mainly weather studies.

Costa Rican officials were told by Chinese officials the balloon flight path deviated from its original plan and it had a limited ability to correct the error, according to the statement.

SECURITY ZONE IN US
The US Coast Guard on Monday imposed a temporary security zone in waters off South Carolina during the military’s search and recovery of debris from the Chinese spy balloon that the US fighter jet shot down.

The White House said the balloon’s flight over the United States had done nothing to improve already tense relations with China and its national security spokesperson dismissed Beijing’s contention that the balloon was for meteorological purposes as straining credulity.

Beijing condemned the shooting down of the balloon and urged Washington to show restraint over the episode.

DID US FAIL TO DETECT CHINESE SPY BALLOONS IN PAST?
On Monday, a senior US general responsible for bringing down a Chinese spy balloon said the military had not detected previous spy balloons before the one that appeared on January 28, 2023.

He further called it an ‘awareness gap’.

General Glen VanHerck, head of US North American Aerospace Defense Command, said the balloon was 200 feet tall and the payload under it weighed a couple of thousand pounds.

He did not rule out that there could have been explosives on the balloon.

THE US-CHINA TENSIONS
Tensions between the US and China, notably over Taiwan, have been a source of deep concern for Washington and many of its allies. They worry that overt conflict will crater the global economy and their concerns were exacerbated last year with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, by which China has largely sided with the Russians.

At the same time, China and the United States have been on a collision course on other matters, including China’s increasing aggressiveness in the South and East China Seas, which have put US allies like Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand on edge, not to mention Australia and New Zealand.

On Monday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was supposed to be in Beijing, meeting with President Xi Jinping in a high-stakes bid to ease ever-rising tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

However, his visit was cancelled late last week as the US and China exchanged angry words about the Chinese balloon.

This comes even as President Joe Biden said US-China relations have not been weakened by the balloon incident.

Though both sides maintain they will manage the situation in a calm manner, the mutual recriminations, particularly since the shoot-down of the balloon on Saturday that drew a stern Chinese protest, do not bode well for rapprochement.

The setback comes at a time when both sides were looking for a way to potentially extricate themselves from a low point in ties that has had the world on edge.