China Refused U.S. Call After Downing of Suspected Spy Balloon, Pentagon Says, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 8, 2023.
Washington and Beijing already face a relationship strained by trade and Taiwan tensions
China’s defense minister rejected a request from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to speak immediately after the U.S. downed a suspected Chinese spy balloon, the Pentagon said, indicating how the episode has further inflamed the powers’ fraught relations.
The Defense Department submitted the request for Mr. Austin to speak over a secure line with Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe after the Air Force shot down the balloon Saturday, said Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder on Tuesday.
“We believe in the importance of maintaining open lines of communication between the United States and the PRC in order to responsibly manage the relationship,” Gen. Ryder said, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “Unfortunately, the PRC has declined our request.”
Both governments have kept some channels open. The State Department said it notified Beijing after the downing of the balloon. A Chinese vice foreign minister lodged a protest with the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, and the Chinese Embassy in Washington said its top diplomat did the same with the State Department on Tuesday.
The Chinese defense minister’s unwillingness to engage shows the difficulties Washington and Beijing face in trying to move past the episode and steady relations beset by tensions from trade to Taiwan to their global rivalry for influence. Crisis communications have particularly been a problem in the past, according to U.S. officials, especially with the Chinese military.
The Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t respond to a request for comment on Mr. Austin’s attempt to reach China’s defense minister.
China has said the balloon was a civilian craft used for meteorological research and had blown off course, something the Biden administration dismissed as untrue. The Chinese Defense Ministry, in a statement released Sunday after the shootdown, criticized the U.S. for an “obvious overreaction” and registered its opposition to the U.S. action.
The presence of the balloon—which traveled for eight days over Alaska, parts of Canada and much of the continental U. S.—prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week to postpone a trip to Beijing. That visit had been agreed to by President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to restart high-level contacts that had largely dwindled during the Covid-19 pandemic and were then further cut off by Beijing to show its anger after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to Taiwan in August.
Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee earlier Tuesday, Ret. Navy Adm. Harry Harris, who led U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in the Asia Pacific, said it was a “shame” that Mr. Blinken’s meeting was canceled and called maintaining talks important to both countries.
In allowing the balloon to pass above a swath of the U.S., the Biden administration has said it waited for the craft to float over water Saturday before shooting it down to prevent casualties on the ground and to be able to retrieve the surveillance equipment the airship was carrying.
On Tuesday, the Navy, Coast Guard and other military personnel began using unmanned underwater drones to locate debris from the balloon that landed in waters about 47 feet deep off the South Carolina coast, defense officials said.
The Navy hasn’t said how much of the balloon and the equipment it carried has been recovered. It hauled sizable pieces of the wreckage during the first phase of the search, which focused on the surface of a debris field that officials said is as large as 225 football fields.
The U.S. is hoping to retrieve the balloon’s remains to learn more about the craft’s surveillance capabilities. The Pentagon has said that China is operating a fleet of surveillance balloons and has sent them over Latin America, Europe and Asia, as well as the U.S.
In the most recent instance, the Chinese balloon passed over sensitive sites, including areas of Montana where the U.S. keeps a portion of its arsenal of nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to the Pentagon. It said countermeasures were taken to prevent the Chinese equipment from collecting information.
The State Department said earlier this week that after the balloon was taken down, the U.S. had contacted the Chinese government but didn’t provide details. Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters Monday that the U.S. “did notify the PRC after the fact that this action had taken place on Saturday.”
Since Mr. Austin became defense chief two years ago, he has spoken with Minister Wei at least once and met face-to-face with him twice. At their most recent meeting, in November on the sidelines of a gathering of defense ministers in Cambodia, Mr. Austin broached reopening some of the military channels of communication Beijing shut down after the Pelosi visit, according to U.S. officials.
The Chinese side didn’t respond, the officials said, and tensions resumed over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and friction between the armed forces.
Washington and Beijing traded blame after a near-confrontation in December over the South China Sea between a Chinese fighter and a U.S. Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance plane. Mr. Austin asked the Chinese side to resume suspended consultations on how to avoid inadvertent confrontations.
“I would invite my colleagues in China to meet us halfway there and work hard to keep those lines of communication open,” Mr. Austin said in January.