The alleged Chinese spy balloon that floated over the continental US earlier this year was equipped with American-made surveillance gear, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing anonymous sources.
An analysis by US defense and intelligence agencies of debris recovered after the balloon was shot down by the US military off the South Carolina coast in February found that the craft had been filled with commercially available American equipment, some of it for sale online, and interspersed with more specialized Chinese sensors, the Journal said late Wednesday.
While the balloon was equipped to collect photographs, video and other information during its eight-day passage over American states and some Canadian territory, it didn’t appear to transmit any data back to China, the report said, citing officials describing preliminary conclusions from an investigation of the episode.
That conflicts with a previous report by NBC News that China was able to transmit the information it collected in real time. The intelligence collected was mostly from electronic signals rather than images, the network added, citing three unidentified current and former senior US officials.
The Journal said US investigators traced purchase orders for some of the equipment carried on the balloon and the purchasers’ relationship to the Chinese government, the officials said.
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Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning avoided a question about the latest report at a regular press briefing Thursday in Beijing. She repeated her government’s assertion that the balloon was for civilian purposes and accidentally drifted over the US.
“Calling it a spy balloon is sheer smear against China by the US,” she said.
The Journal report came shortly after a trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing — the most senior American official to visit China in five years — as the two countries try to mend diplomatic relations. Blinken’s visit had originally been planned for February, but was postponed after the Chinese balloon was spotted over the US.
Both sides hailed the trip as a success and more officials are expected to travel to each other’s countries in the coming months, including Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
The Blinken visit also set the stage for a possible meeting between President Joe Biden and the Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 summit in India in September, and perhaps for a visit by Chinese leader to the US for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in November.
Biden said last week that following Blinken’s trip that he believed Beijing wanted to “have a relationship again.” He added that Xi was unaware that the balloon that floated over the continental US had blown off course until the matter became an international incident.
Beijing is facing an increasingly challenging geopolitical landscape, with the US blocking China’s access to high-tech chips and putting pressure on Xi to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Geopolitical strains are also deterring foreign investment just as China’s economy is struggling to keep its recovery momentum after its Covid Zero policy was dropped late last year.
--With assistance from Lucille Liu and Philip Glamann.
(Updates with response by China’s Foreign Ministry.)