Beijing urged Washington to exercise caution on Monday as the U.S. military looking for pieces of what it believed to be a Chinese surveillance balloon that it shot down over the Atlantic, but which China claims was actually a civilian craft that erroneously wandered off course.
The balloon saga has exacerbated already sour ties, leading Washington to postpone Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s weekend trip to Beijing.
China criticized the U.S. response as an “obvious overreaction” after a fighter jet from that country shot down the balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday after tracking its course across the continental United States.
The balloon was allegedly intended for scientific use, and China has frequently claimed that it veered off track.
“China firmly opposes and strongly protests against this,” Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng said as cited by Reuters.
China was informed by the United States that its balloon had strayed over its territory, according to Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for the Chinese foreign ministry on Monday.
Another balloon was seen over Latin America, according to Mao, and it turned out to be an unmanned civilian airship conducting a test flight that “severely deviated and unintentionally entered the space above Latin America because it was affected by the weather and because it has limited self-steering capability.”
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