US postpones China trip after discovering suspected spy balloon
The US has postponed a high-stakes diplomatic trip to China after discovering a Chinese balloon flying over Montana suspected to be spying.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to leave Washington, DC, for Beijing on Friday. The decision to delay the visit was made hours before his planned departure, an administration official said.
China claimed that the balloon was a weather research satellite that blew off course. But the US, which announced the discovery of the balloon on Thursday, has assessed it as a surveillance satellite.
Blinken was scheduled to meet his Chinese counterpart, Minister of Foreign Affairs Qin Gan, and potentially Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.
President Joe Biden decided it would be better not to go ahead with the high-stakes trip, according to the administration official.
While delivering remarks on the January jobs report from the White House on Friday morning, Biden declined to answer any questions from reporters that were not about the economy.
The suspected spy balloon is the size of three buses and has been hovering for a number of days over states including Montana, which has the Malmstrom Air Force Base and one of the country’s three nuclear missile silo fields.
The Pentagon decided against shooting the balloon down because it could harm Americans on the ground on the descent.
Former President Donald Trump and another Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, a former US ambassador to the United Nations, both opined that the US should shoot down the balloon immediately.
Biden and Xi in November agreed to Blinken’s trip, which was not formally announced. The meetings were slated to take place Sunday and Monday, and were viewed as an opportunity for the two superpowers to find common ground on some issues. The balloon brought more strain to the relationship between the nations.
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