BEIJING. Yesterday, he spoke of a serious blow to China-US relations. Beijing on occasion shoot down a chinese balloon that crossed it US airspace. Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng filed a formal protest with the US Embassy in Beijing yesterday, implying that USA violated international law. “The indiscriminate use of military force against a civilian unmanned aerial vehicle violates the spirit of international law and international conventions. What the US did dealt a severe blow to Sino-US relations after the Bali summit,” Xie said, referring to the summit between the presidents. Joe Biden And Xi Jinping In November.

Yesterday, Beijing confirmed that the second unmanned balloon currently flying over Latin America and the Caribbean also belongs to China, blaming the deviation from its course due to weather conditions and the inability to remotely control it. “This is an unmanned balloon that China is using for flight tests,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Beijing said.

An escalation of aggressive rhetoric between Beijing and Washington over the flight of the Chinese Hot Air Balloon (named after the first balloon built by the Montgolfier brothers in 1783) led US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to cancel a planned weekend visit to China.

Treaty of Chicago

Analysts say Beijing’s tough rhetoric and implicit threats to take the US to international courts for violating the Chicago Convention on International Aviation are harbingers of escalation and possible escalation. Chinese communiqués use the term “civilian unmanned aerial vehicles” to describe the hot air balloon. “This terminology forms the basis of the narrative that the US used violent means against a civilian aircraft in danger,” Orel Sarri, professor of international law at the University of Exeter in the UK, told the Financial Times. Shari argues that the terms of the Chicago Treaty do not apply in the case of the Chinese balloon, and Chinese rhetoric muddies the legal waters. On Friday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said China had clearly violated US airspace as well as international law.

Beijing is also talking about a second “unmanned political balloon” flying over Latin America.

In an internal document last year, the U.S. military legal service, which also uses unmanned high-altitude balloons, said such balloons under military control “are foreign aircraft and are subject to the same rules as any foreign aircraft.” This includes securing an airspace clearance and filing a flight plan.

An internal U.S. Indo-Pacific Administration legal document emphasizes that the same rules apply to unmanned balloons “unless they are light weather balloons controlled by the competent authorities.”

On Wednesday, when Anthony Blinken called a Chinese diplomat at the State Department to complain, his Chinese counterpart was unable to provide an explanation. Shortly thereafter, the Chinese embassy hit back, offering as an explanation that the balloon in question was not being used for military or espionage purposes and had simply deviated from its course.

In a statement yesterday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Beijing had immediately informed US authorities, accusing Washington of “overreacting” and using violent means to shoot down the unmanned balloon. “Beijing’s request to deal with calmness, professionalism and prudence was blatantly ignored by the American side. The flight of the balloon over the United States was an accident,” Mao said.

Craig Singleton, a China expert at the conservative Institute for the Defense of Democracy, said Beijing violated international law by entering US airspace without permission.