Blinken meets China's top diplomat at Munich Security Conference
World
Such behavior is astonishing to have deployed fighter plane to shoot down balloon, Wang Yi
MUNICH/BEIJING (Reuters) - In the midst of an ongoing dispute between the two superpowers over a rumored Chinese spy balloon that the United States shot down, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with China's top diplomat Wang Yi on Saturday outside of the Munich Security Conference, according to a senior State Department official.
Under the guise of secrecy, the State Department official wrote: "We can confirm that Secretary Blinken ended a discussion with... Wang Yi on the fringes of the Munich Security Conference."
A Reuters witness had observed Blinken's motorcade depart his hotel less than two hours earlier on its way to an unspecified location.
The balloon disagreement damaged bilateral ties at a time when the West is keenly monitoring Beijing's response to the Ukrainian crisis. The balloon soared across the United States and Canada before being shot down on President Joe Biden's orders.
Wang made fun of the United States earlier on Saturday, calling its actions in shooting down the balloon a "hysterical" violation of international law.
"Such behavior is astonishing, even crazy, to have deployed advanced fighter plane to shoot down balloon with missile," Wang remarked on Saturday.
Is the United States going to shoot down every balloon in the globe since there are so many of them and so many different countries own them? said he.
"We call on the United States to demonstrate its sincerity, own its errors, and put an end to this event, which has harmed Sino-U.S. ties."
This month's balloon flight over the American mainland caused a stir in Washington and forced Blinken to cancel a trip to China. Both sides saw that trip, which would have been the first by a U.S. secretary of state to China in five years, as an opportunity to normalize relations that were becoming more tense.
When the U.S. military shot down a 200-foot (60-meter) balloon on February 4, China responded strongly, claiming the balloon was for weather monitoring and had veered off track. Washington, however, said that it was unmistakably a surveillance balloon with a sizable undercarriage housing equipment.
Biden spoke about the balloon incident on Thursday. He stated that he wanted to learn more about the situation and that he planned to discuss it with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Biden did not specify a time for speaking with Xi in his most in-depth statements to yet regarding the Chinese balloon and three unidentified objects shot down by American jets, but he did state that the United States was still conducting diplomatic talks with China on the matter.
