Feb. 13 (UPI) — China on Monday accused the United States of flying its own balloons into Chinese airspace with the Pentagon swiftly denying the allegation.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin accused the United States of floating at least 10 balloons into Chinese airspace since last year during a regular press conference after the United States has shot down multiple unidentified objects over its airspace in the past 10 days.
“The United States should first reflect on itself and change course, rather than slander, discredit or incite confrontation,” Wang said.
U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson responded to the allegations on Twitter Monday, saying the claims were not true.
“Any claim that the U.S. government operates surveillance balloons over the PRC is false,” Watson wrote. “It is China that has a high-altitude surveillance balloon program for intelligence collection, that it has used to violate the sovereignty of the U.S. and over 40 countries across five continents.”
Wang reiterated China’s stance that the first object — publicly identified as a spy balloon deployed by Beijing — carried equipment that measured the weather and went astray while the Biden administration said it was a surveillance balloon flying oversensitive military locations.
Watson said Wang’s comments amount to “damage control” over its surveillance operation being exposed.
“It has repeatedly and wrongly claimed the surveillance balloon it sent over the U.S. was a weather balloon and has failed to offer any credible explanations for its intrusion into our airspace, the airspace of others.”
In regards to objects shot down in the ensuing days over Montana, Canada and Michigan, which Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Sunday were likely similar balloons to the first, Wang said that he did not “have anything on that.”
China has also repeatedly criticized the U.S. decision to shoot down the Chinese balloon, with Wang on Monday characterizing it as a “trigger-happy overreaction.”