US not flying surveillance craft over Chinese airspace, White House says
Peter Wells in New York
The White House said it is not flying any surveillance craft over Chinese airspace, pushing back at claims from Beijing that the US has repeatedly flown surveillance balloons into its airspace.
Beijing’s allegation came after the US shot down what it said was a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina on February 4. Three other high-altitude objects were shot down by the US in recent days over remote parts of Canada and Alaska, though their ownership or purpose has yet to be determined.
“We are not flying surveillance balloons over China. I’m not aware of any surveillance craft over Chinese airspace,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said at a White House press briefing Monday.
Referring to the Chinese spy balloon shot down earlier this month, Kirby said “we have been able to determine that China has a high altitude balloon programme for intelligence collection that is connected to the People’s Liberation Army” and that these objects have “crossed over dozens of countries on multiple continents” in the past few years.
“These balloons have provided limited additive capabilities to the [People’s Republic of China’s] other intelligence platforms used over the United States,” Kirby continued, but if the PRC, in future, advanced this technology, it “could become valuable to them.”
Kirby said the salvage operation to retrieve debris from the Chinese spy balloon has been able to recover “some” of the electronics housed inside the payload, as well as parts of the balloon, that sank into relatively shallow waters in the Atlantic Ocean.
The aerial objects taken down by the US over Alaska and Canada since Friday were at much lower altitudes than the Chinese spy balloon, potentially putting them in the path of aircraft. Kirby said it was not yet known whether these objects were conducting surveillance, but that could not be ruled out. For those reasons, he said the decision was made to shoot them down out of an abundance of caution.