US balloons breached airspace at least 10 times, says China; White House rejects claims

As reports circulate of the US working to collect debris from the surveillance balloon, believed to be Chinese, that was shot down on February 4, Beijing is hitting back with its own accusations for the North American country.

Since downing the original balloon, the Pentagon has shot down three more objects spotted over airspaces in North America, with the most recent one shot down on Sunday over Lake Huron.

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Wang Wenbin, while at a regular briefing on Monday, stated, “It’s not uncommon as well for the US to illegally enter the airspace of other countries…Since last year alone, US balloons have illegally flown above China more than 10 times without any approval from Chinese authorities…The first thing the US side should do is start with a clean slate, undergo some self-reflection, instead of smearing and accusing China.”

“If you want to know more about US high-altitude balloons illegally entering China’s airspace, I suggest you refer to the US side,” the foreign ministry spokesperson added.

The US seemed to vehemently deny the accusations, with the National Security Council Spokeswoman, Adrienne Watson, taking to Twitter to tweet, “Any claim that the US government operates surveillance balloons over the PRC is false. It is China that has a high-altitude surveillance balloon program for intelligence collection, that it has used to violate the sovereignty of the US and over 40 countries across 5 continents.”

“This is the latest example of China scrambling to do damage control. It has repeatedly and wrongly claimed the surveillance balloon it sent over the US was a weather balloon and has failed to offer any credible explanations for its intrusion into our airspace, airspace of others,” Watson added in another tweet.