Hot air balloons, China denounces the US: "deliberately fueled tensions"

"The United States should have been rational and professional, instead it has been engaged in distorting facts, abusing power and stoking tensions." This was stated by the spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Mao Ning, according to whom Washington's action "fully revealed the hegemonic sentiments of the American side".

Earlier, US President Joe Biden suggested that China's leadership didn't know where "[the balloon] was, what was in it and what was going on" and stated that "this is one of those things that cause great embarrassment in dictators,” referring to Xi Jinping.

On June 18-19, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to China for a visit, originally scheduled for February but which did not take place due to the incident with the Chinese balloon shot down by a missile inside the airspace of the United States. Beijing says the balloon was a Chinese weather probe, but according to the Washington administration it would have been used to "gather important information".