It's time to end balloon spat

"No-body can be uncheered with a balloon" is one of English writer and poet A.A. Milne's best-known quotes. Milne's words apply to almost everyone, not just kids.

People's fascination with balloons is hard to explain, perhaps because they seem kind of magical. Of course, they aren't — in reality. They are very real, though, not just as playthings for kids but also, for instance, as research tools. But if balloons enter the political realm, things can quickly assume a dramatically "uncheered" dimension.

That's exactly what happened earlier this month when a Chinese balloon happened to enter US airspace. While Beijing insists the balloon was an unmanned civilian weather research craft with limited navigation capability that flew off course due to force majeure, the United States claims it was a surveillance balloon sent by China into its airspace.

After the balloon was spotted over Montana early this month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken abruptly called off a working visit to Beijing. However, Blinken held an informal meeting with China' senior diplomat Wang Yi on the sidelines of the annual Munich Security Conference on Saturday.

Both Blinken and Wang are highly qualified officials doing their best to defend their respective country's national interests. Incidentally, that's what I, an adherent of international relations' school of realism, would expect from any foreign minister. (In the context of the 27-nation European Union, I wonder, increasingly, what kind of and whose interests some of these foreign ministers and other officials in Brussels actually defend, but that's another story).

Before Saturday's meeting, Wang — one of the world's most seasoned foreign affairs officials with more than three decades of diplomatic experience — told the 59th Munich Security Conference that the US' reaction to the balloon was "hysterical and absurd".

I would add that Washington's reaction was also rather hypocritical, considering that it takes great pride in its global surveillance capabilities.

Known to not mince words when he believes it is in China's national interest, Wang criticized the US administration for its "misguided" perception of China. He also told reporters, tongue in cheek, during a Q&A session that "there are many balloons from many countries in the sky. Do you want to down each and every (one) of them?"

Referring to US President Joe Biden's decision to shoot down the Chinese balloon, Wang urged Washington "not to do such preposterous things simply to divert attention from its own domestic problems".

The Chinese balloon was shot down over US waters on Feb 4. According to Xinhua, during his meeting with Blinken, Wang, as director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, urged the US side to "correct its mistakes, acknowledge and repair the damage it has done to China-US relations over the Chinese civilian unmanned airship incident".

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin had already told a regular news conference in Beijing on Friday that the "unintended" entry of the Chinese flying craft into US airspace was "an entirely unexpected, isolated incident", and urged the US to "work in the same direction with China to manage (their) differences, handle this unexpected and isolated incident, avoid misunderstanding and miscalculation, and bring China-US relations back to the track of sound and steady development".

The Foreign Ministry spokesman also said that "despite international law and customary practice, the US overreacted and abused the use of force by downing China's unmanned civilian airship", and added that "US balloons have illegally flown over China's airspace multiple times without China's approval".

Late last week, the White House seemed to be in damage control mood by taking the air out of the balloon spat with Beijing by acknowledging that preliminary evidence suggests that three other unidentified aerial objects shot down by US fighter jets this month were not from China.

London-based The Guardian reported on Feb 17 that the US military possibly expended a missile costing $439,000"to fell an innocuous hobby balloon worth about $12" from a group of amateur balloon enthusiasts (who surely would concur with A.A. Milne that "no-body can be uncheered with a balloon") in Illinois.

Watching the Chinese balloon saga on both CNN and Fox confirmed my growing worry that the US media are reporting less and less news and spreading more and more views that they want to promote. Unfortunately, the balloon row once again gave the "China threat" proponents a chance to air (quite literally) their unsavory claims which are not only erroneous but perilous too.

I was surprised when Biden said last week that he wished to talk with the Chinese leader about the balloon incident "to get to the bottom of it". I think that Blinken and Wang Yi, with the help of other senior foreign affairs officials or even airspace experts from both sides, should instead continue to try and resolve the balloon issue as soon as possible.

China-US relations are the world's most important bilateral ties and there is a raft of key matters, including trade and climate change, which the two heads of state ought to discuss. The world faces a plethora of pressing issues that the international community as a whole needs to tackle urgently. And that's why it is high time the two sides settled the balloon dispute and moved on to more important questions.

The author is the director of the Macau Post Daily.

The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of China Daily and China Daily website.

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