The recent airship incident is a political farce manufactured by the U.S. and the deep-seated reason of such a stir is that the U.S. has been misled by misperception and strategic misjudgment about China, Wang Yi, director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, said at this year's Munich Security Conference. 

Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the Chinese side regretted the unintended entry of a Chinese civilian airship into U.S. airspace due to force majeure.

"It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes. Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course."

The airship was eventually shot down by a U.S. missile fired from an F-22 Raptor fighter jet despite that the U.S. Department of Defense said the balloon did not pose any military or personal threat to ground personnel.

Weather balloons commonly used

Weather balloons are an important part of the Global Observing System which underpins weather forecasts and climate monitoring, and millions of observations are gathered worldwide every day, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said last week.

Radiosondes, which act as upper-air stations are attached to free-rising balloons and released simultaneously from almost 900 locations worldwide, according to the WMO.

The U.S. is going to need a lot of missiles if its fighter jets are to shoot down every stray balloon that sets off a radar warning in American airspace, Paul Fetkowitz, president of Kaymont Consolidated Industries, a maker of high-altitude balloons in the U.S. told the New York Times.

"At any given moment, thousands of balloons" are above the Earth, including many used in the U.S. by government agencies, military forces, independent researchers and hobbyists, he added. 

The WMO noted that weather balloons have been a very important part of the global observing network for decades as they provide valuable input in real-time for computer forecast models, local data for meteorologists to make forecasts and predict storms, climate monitoring and data for research to better understand weather and climate processes.

Hyping up "China Threat"

Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, on Monday strongly urged the U.S. Congress to respect the facts, stop slandering and smearing China and avoid further damage to China-U.S. relations.

The so-called resolution on Chinese unmanned airship passed by the U.S. Senate hyped up the "China threat" and maliciously attacked and smeared China, the committee said in a statement, noting that it is another wrong move to distort facts in an attempt to put pressure on China.

Zhu Feng, professor of international relations at Nanjing University told China Media Group that the U.S. Congress used the incident as an excuse to deepen its strategic crackdown on China.

The U.S. has now firmly targeted China as its largest strategic competitor, he said, adding that China's pursuit of national rejuvenation and Chinese modernization is beneficial to sustainable development and peace, prosperity and stability of the world, but the U.S. interpretation of China's domestic and foreign affairs is full of narrow self-interest, bigotry and even bullying of a hegemonic country. 

(Cover: A Chinese airship drifts to the ocean after being shot down off the coast in Surfside Beach, South Carolina, U.S. February 4, 2023. /Reuters)