(TheLastPatriotNews.com) – Communist China issued strong-worded threats against the United States because America allegedly violated its sovereignty with the recent downing of the Chinese spy balloon near South Carolina’s coast.
Beijing has maintained that the giant flying object was a weather balloon that had gone off course, a position reiterated on Wednesday by China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin.
Wang accused the US government of overreacting when on February 4, it had the US Air Force shoot down the surveillance airship.
After the object’s destruction, the United States slapped sanctions on six Chinese entities over involvement in Beijing’s spying balloon program.
“The US has abused force, overreacted, escalated the situation, and used this as a pretext to illegally sanction Chinese companies and institutions,” Wang stated, as cited by The New York Post.
“China is firmly opposed to this and will take countermeasures against relevant US entities that undermine China’s sovereignty and security in accordance with the law,” he elaborated.
“[China will] resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and its legitimate rights and interests,” the spokesman added.
At the same time, though, Wang did not mention what specific “countermeasures” the People’s Republic of China would take against the United States, for instance, which US entities it might countersanction.
Although the Chinese government has denied that the balloon was a military surveillance asset, it has not revealed which of its departments had operated it.
Beijing at first expressed regret that its “weather balloon” had gone into US airspace without permission but later hyped its rhetoric against the United States.
Earlier this week, the Chinese authorities claimed that the US government had sent over 10 high-altitude spying balloons into its airspace in the last year alone.
“Not true. Not doing it. Just absolutely not true. We are not flying balloons over China,” Adm. John Kirby, the spokesman of the White House National Security Council, stated in an MSNBC interview on Monday.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken canceled a planned visit to China earlier this month due to the spy balloon incident. Still, reports say he may meet with the Chinese Foreign Minister during the Munich Security Conference in Germany this week.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, a former Barack Obama aide, declared that the Chinese surveillance balloon was part of Beijing’s “pattern of aggressive behavior.”
“The balloon to me is not an isolated incident,” Emanuel said.
He added that China recently beamed a military-grade laser at a Philippine coast guard patrol, sent fighter jets to harass US planes, and operated secret illegal police stations inside the US, Ireland, and other nations.
“You [have to] act appropriately to certain basic premises. That is, you don’t open police stations in other countries ignorant of their laws, as if your laws don’t have any boundaries,” the US ambassador to Japan said.
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