HONG KONG — China on Thursday accused the United States of escalating the dispute over the downed surveillance balloon, as concerns grew that the saga may send relations between the world’s two largest economies further into a tailspin.
The episode and the mystery surrounding subsequent aerial objects shot down over North America have fueled a domestic media frenzy and piled political pressure on the White House, but also intensified concerns about the global fallout from U.S.-China diplomacy being knocked off course.
As President Joe Biden prepared to give his most extensive remarks yet on the matter, Beijing hit back anew over what it has framed as Washington’s overreaction. But the response has also undermined China’s recent efforts to signal a diplomatic softening, experts told NBC News.
‘Bluffing’ from Beijing?
Biden has been under pressure from both Republicans and Democrats to tell the public more, and he could speak as early as Thursday, three people familiar with the matter told NBC News. Asked about Biden’s potential remarks, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Thursday that the U.S. “cannot ask for communication and dialogue on one hand, while sharpening differences and escalating crises.”
An early sign of the rising hostility came when Beijing declined Washington’s request for a secure call between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his counterpart, National Defense Minister Wei Fenghe. China later said it declined the call because the U.S. had not “created the proper atmosphere for dialogue.”
In an interview with NBC News on Wednesday, Austin said that he had emphasized the need to maintain open lines of communication with China, and that Wei also recognized its importance. But “when something happens, they somehow tend to shut down our military channels of communication,” he said. “I think that’s dangerous.”
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Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist at the Australian National University, said China’s refusal of the call suggested it was “bluffing” in its harsh rhetoric, as it would not boycott an essential crisis management tool if it had any real intention of escalating the situation militarily.
“That’s why they think it’s safe for them to use the military hotline as diplomatic leverage,” he said. But it also shows, Sung said, that China’s recent pivot away from its hard-line “wolf warrior” diplomacy is not wholehearted.
“China’s attempt at moderating its diplomatic outreach has just been revealed as a tactical shift only, something that it is ready to do away with the second that a major external crisis hits,” he said.
The foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, also urged Congress to avoid actions that might escalate the situation, after the Senate unanimously passed two resolutions on Wednesday condemning China for sending the surveillance balloon into U.S. airspace. A similar unanimous House resolution was criticized on Thursday by China’s ceremonial parliament, which said it “deliberately exaggerates the ‘China threat.’”
U.S. lawmakers “took advantage of the issue and fanned the flames, fully exposing their sinister intention to oppose China and contain China,” according to the statement from the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
