Republican lawmakers on Sunday accused China of deliberating surveilling sensitive U.S. military sites with a suspected spy balloon and said the Biden administration had given Beijing an intelligence opening by not downing the balloon during its high-altitude drift through American airspace.
The balloon's presence in the sky above the United States before a military jet shot it down over the Atlantic Ocean with a missile Saturday further strained U.S.-China ties. America's top diplomat abruptly scrapped a trip to Beijing and China's defence ministry said in a statement after the balloon fell into the waters off the Carolina coast that it "reserves the right to take necessary measures to deal with similar situations.
Biden issued the shootdown order but had wanted it to happen earlier, on Wednesday. He was advised that the best time for the operation would be when it was over water, U.S. officials said. Military officials determined that bringing down the balloon over land from an altitude of 60,000 feet would pose an undue risk to people on the ground.
"They didn't go and look at the Grand Canyon," Turner said. "They went and looked at our nuclear weapon sites and the missile defence sites throughout the country." China has denied any claims of spying and said it was a civilian-use balloon intended for meteorology research. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs contended that the balloon's journey was out of the Chinese government's control.
He said "this really damages a relationship between us and China" and "puts a big dent in moving forward in a constructive way, which we really need to do."
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