With luck, the balloon affair will not escalate. But something else like it could
not be a new cold war,” Joe Biden told Xi Jinping when the pair met in Bali in November. Thus began a rare few months of detente in Sino-American relations. In January, when they connected in Zurich, the two countries’ senior economic officials spoke of enhanced communication and co-operation. A visit to Beijing by Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, planned for February 5th and 6th, was meant to consolidate progress. Then aIt was no ordinary inflatable.
That China spies on America, and vice versa, is no secret. The intelligence-gathering value of the balloon is limited, as even the Pentagon concedes. This matters, because when a rivalry grows as intense as that between America and China, small incidents risk relations spiralling out of control. To prevent that, China and America need a way to insulate their relationship from inevitable mishaps and miscalculations—and, indeed, Chinese clumsiness.
Democrats, too, are angry. Jon Tester, a senator from Montana, called the balloon a “clear threat” to national security. “I’m demanding answers from the Biden administration.” Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking Democrat on the China Select Committee, assented to a statement that painted the balloon incursion as evidence that China’s recent diplomatic outreach did not represent a substantive change in policy. Such is the hostility directed at China that Mr Biden has little room for manoeuvre.
Yet even apologetic officials exude animosity. While China’s foreign ministry expressed regret, the country’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, told Mr Blinken that China will “not accept any groundless conjecture or hype”, according to a ministry description of their phone call. Meanwhile, the Communist Party’s media outlets are churning out commentaries blaming America for ratcheting up tensions by, for example, expanding its military presence in the Philippines.
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