Joe Biden “does not seek conflict” with China after US forces shot down a Chinese “spy balloon” overflying the United States, the US president said according to excerpts from an interview with PBS released this Wednesday.
The US head of state answered “no” to a journalist’s question about whether relations with Beijing had suffered a “severe blow” due to the latest controversy.
“We are going to compete squarely with China, but we are not looking for a conflict,” Joe Biden stressed.
Washington has tried to be very cautious when it comes to raising its tone, after having shot down on Saturday a Chinese “spy balloon” that had been flying over several parts of the country for days, such as the state of Montana, in the northeast, where the three existing nuclear missile silo fields on US soil.
China admitted that the balloon belongs to it, but said it had been blown off course by strong winds and was used for meteorological purposes, not espionage.
Already before the US Congress this Tuesday, Joe Biden assured that if China “threatens the sovereignty” of the US, it will act “to protect the country.”
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that China had launched “in recent years” a “fleet of balloons intended for espionage operations” around the world.
According to another of the White House spokesmen, John Kirby, China has been working for years on this “program” of balloons for espionage operations that have already flown over regions around the world.
“This is a program that the Chinese have been working on for several years. They have tried to improve it, expand it and implement it, all with the aim of obtaining confidential information,” the center’s spokesman told foreign media. .
Kirby added that Washington is talking to its allies around the world to provide them with information about the scope of this Chinese espionage program and, without giving further details, indicated that new information on the matter will be revealed today.
The United States also announced on Friday that it had detected another “spy balloon” over Latin America, which the Chinese government also admitted, though it continued to maintain that the aircraft posed “no threat.”
The countries in which the device was detected were Costa Rica, Colombia and Venezuela, according to different sources.
The discovery of these “spy balloons” triggered a diplomatic crisis between Washington and Beijing and led to the suspension of an already scheduled trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the Asian country.
Source: TSF
