• Earlier, the Pentagon had claimed that it was a Chinese surveillance balloon
Responding to a US allegation that China sent a surveillance balloon over US airspace, Beijing said on Friday it was for weather research and was pushed by the wind and it was sorry the airship strayed.
In a statement late Friday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the balloon was a civilian airship mainly used for meteorological research. The ministry said the airship has limited steering capabilities and "deviated far from its planned course" due to the winds.
"The Chinese side unexpectedly regrets the unintended entry of the airship into US airspace," the statement said, citing a legal term used to refer to events beyond one's control.
On Thursday, a senior US defense official told reporters at the Pentagon that the US is "highly confident" that the object seen in US airspace in recent days was a Chinese high-altitude balloon and that it was sensitive to gathering information. Was flying over the sites. One of the locations where a balloon was spotted was in Montana, which is home to one of the nation's three nuclear missile silo areas at Malmstrom Air Force Base. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
Defense officials said that the U.S. assessed that balloons have "limited" value in terms of providing intelligence that cannot be obtained by other technologies such as spy satellites.
The Pentagon decided not to shoot down the balloon due to concerns about hurting people on the ground, potentially flying over sensitive sites.
The news came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was expected to make his first visit to Beijing later this week. The trip has not been formally announced, and it was not immediately clear whether the discovery of the balloon would affect their travel plans. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said she had no information about the visit.
Blinken will be the highest-ranking member of President Joe Biden's administration to visit China, on a mission to ease the sharp deterioration in relations between the countries amid trade disputes and concerns about Beijing's increasingly aggressive stance in Taiwan and the South China Sea .
Tensions with China are particularly high over a range of issues from Taiwan and the South China Sea to human rights in China's western Xinjiang region and a crackdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong. China's tacit support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, North Korea's refusal to rein in its growing ballistic missile program and ongoing disputes over trade and technology are not the least of that list of irritants.
On Tuesday, Taiwan scrambled fighter jets, put its navy on alert and activated missile systems in response to nearby operations by 34 Chinese military aircraft and nine warships that seek to destabilize and intimidate the self-governing island democracy. part of Beijing's strategy.
Twenty of those planes crossed the central line in the Taiwan Strait, which has long been an unofficial buffer zone between the two sides, which were separated in 1949 during a civil war.
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