China loses more than one balloon – ties with US remain under pressure One dead and two injured in knife attack in the Netherlands

The balloon case is serious, but there is also a certain entertainment value to it – at least as long as the consequences of the alleged Chinese espionage attempt high in American airspace were not in the foreground, but simply the fascination of the extraordinary.

So this big white thing flew over the country, and the Pentagon wants to have recognized it early: it can’t really be dangerous to us, the leadership in Beijing won’t be able to get more accurate pictures this way than via satellite or. In addition, precautions would have been taken to prevent data transmission from the balloon. It also wasn’t the first time such a balloon had been sighted in the US, it said. Everything half as wild, at least not particularly refined.

The vicious ridicule with which the photos of the strange object were spread on the Internet was appropriate. Hard at last, such demands were easy for many people to type on their keyboards, and they were made emphatically in political Washington as well. In the end, it happened like this: a fighter jet took the balloon out of the sky off the east coast of the US. Now they literally and figuratively have to pick up the rubble.

The appearance of relaxation

What is fished out of the sea can certainly provide information about the goals of the mysterious mission. The apologies from Beijing that the balloon was only used for research purposes and went off course due to “force majeure” can thus be more tangibly refuted. US President Joe Biden must surely have known what was being played here when he gave the order to shoot it down. His government has not yet released details of its findings.

However, US-China relations were already in shambles and the current incident is more a symptom of the existing crisis than the trigger of a new one. The distrust was great, the quarrel energetic. America’s national security strategy describes China as the “biggest geopolitical threat”, and the US government is acting accordingly, including by pressuring allies to do the same. Meanwhile, the regime in Beijing is working on its authoritarian expansion and is determined to vigorously assert its claims to power, both at home and in the world.

And yet the last semblance of relaxation had come. After all, we wanted to keep talking to each other. Presidents Xi Jinping and Biden agreed to hold regular talks at the G20 summit in Indonesia. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was actually supposed to have been received in Beijing this Sunday: the threat to Taiwan and China’s attitude to Russia’s war on Ukraine, the US’s attempt to slow China’s technological progress with export blockades – there would have been a lot to discuss.

“The Thing Played On”

The settlement of the balloon affair shows that both parties are apparently still interested. Blinken, for example, canceled his visit to Beijing, but intends to make amends as soon as the matter is clarified, provided it does not put an additional burden on the talks. And the US government refrains from immediate retaliation.

China, on the other hand, has been rumbling a little rougher since the balloon was launched, calling the proceedings an “overreaction” but otherwise behaving diplomatically defensively: “Strong dissatisfaction” with the use of force has somewhat outraged the state service of the regime. the State Department reports that politicians and the media in the US “incited” the matter. Escalation looks different.

This is not to say that the matter would soon be forgotten. The US and China should certainly not treat each other softly. But both know that espionage and teasing are part of this relationship. At the same time, like Beijing leaders, the Biden administration believes in the stabilizing benefits of ongoing contacts, difficult as they are. From this point of view, the balloon flight with its inglorious end would be nothing more than an accident – whether China seriously expected it or just wanted to test what would happen. An annoyance that both powers can and must deal with.

However, China did not get out of this number without losses. This is specifically the case for the balloon, whose equipment is now in enemy hands – but that could have been expected, the value of this loot is likely to be limited. Moreover, China has harmed itself politically. Because the attempts at rapprochement in the recent past came from the leadership in Beijing. Under the weight of its failed zero-Covid policy, which is currently hitting the country economically in an unbroken wave of corona, China seemed to recognize that there were a number of problems that needed to be solved. If the state media there propagate that the incident was used as an excuse to cancel Blinken’s visit, that is quite correct.

Now that the balloon has burst, it is hoped that the United States will be prepared to make short-term concessions. Instead, the pressure on Joe Biden not to give up against China has only increased. And the softer Western allies have once again been shown what they are up against in systemic competition with China. But maybe the cadres in Beijing just feel very safe and that was exactly the intention behind the action.

This article was first published on Zeit Online. Watson may have changed the headings and subheadings. Here’s the original.