Blinken postpones trip to Beijing after Chinese spy balloon crisis
The secretary of state made this decision just a few hours before his departure. China claimed the device was a meteorological research "airship."
After learning that the Pentagon detected a Chinese spy balloon over U.S. territory, Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed his official trip to Beijing, as reported by the Associated Press. The decision came just hours before Blinken's departure to China on an official visit.
The communist regime in Beijing claimed that the drone seen over Montana was a weather research "airship" that suffered a malfunction and veered off course. The United States described it as a surveillance device.
The Army deployed several fighters to intercept the object but decided not to shoot it down due to bureaucratic and public safety risks. Numerous lawmakers such as Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the House of Representatives, or Ted Cruz, Republican senator from Florida, called the finding "blatant disregard" for the United States on the part of China. Others like Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican representative from Georgia, directly questioned why the device was not shot down.