Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher, chair of the House’s new committee on China, warns that a Chinese spy balloon spotted over U.S. airspace this week is the latest proof of the threat the People’s Republic of China poses at home.
And it won’t be the last time the communist nation attempts to mock and embarrass the United States under the Biden administration’s weak foreign policy, says Gallagher (R-WI-08).
Gallagher and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), ranking member of the Select Committee on China, issued a joint statement Friday on reports of the spy balloon, which Pentagon officials say was seen flying over the Aleutian Islands and into Canada before moving into the central United States’ airspace.
“The Chinese Communist Party should not have on-demand access to American airspace. Not only is this a violation of American sovereignty, coming only days before Secretary Blinken’s trip to the PRC [People’s Republic of China], but it also makes clear that the CCP’s recent diplomatic overtures do not represent a substantive change in policy,” Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi said. “Indeed, this incident demonstrates that the CCP threat is not confined to distant shores—it is here at home and we must act to counter this threat.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has postponed his planned trop to Beijing next week.
“After consultations with our interagency partners, as well as with Congress, we have concluded that the conditions are not right at this moment for Secretary Blinken to travel to China,” a State Department official told reporters Friday.
Blinken’s trip had been in the offing since November, when President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping conferred at the Group 20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia.
Relationships between the United States and the communist superpower have chilled in recent years as China takes a more aggressive position in geo-politics and looks to widen its sphere of influence.
Sources told Fox News that Pentagon officials knew the spy balloon was moving toward U.S. air space for some time.
Gallagher, appearing on Fox News, said that knowledge makes it all the more “embarrassing and unfathomable” why U.S. military officials didn’t shoot the spy craft down earlier — particularly as it slowly moved through sparsely populated portions of Montana.
“I have to believe that there was an option earlier where we could have disabled this, brought it down to a lower altitude or blown it out of the sky,” the congressman said. “And, if the Pentagon doesn’t have such a capability to do that safely in the appropriate timeline, well, with our over $800 billion Pentagon budget we need to develop that capability rapidly because this is not the last such incident we’re going to see from the Chinese Communist Party.”
“They’re testing us, they’re mocking us, they’re trying to embarrass us, and, of course, they’re trying to collect as much sensitive information as possible from us,” he added.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
