Posted on 02/06/2023 8:26:26 AM PST by Kazan
The New York Times carries a weird 'news analysis' by its somewhat neoconned White House and national security correspondent David Sanger about the recent Chinese weather ballon incident. Sanger asserts that China has failed to communicate on the issue:
[B]eyond the made-for-cable-news spectacle, the entire incident also speaks volumes about how little Washington and Beijing communicate, almost 22 years after the collision of an American spy plane and a Chinese fighter about 70 miles off the coast of Hainan Island led both sides to vow that they would improve their crisis management.
...
This was hardly a life-threatening crisis. But the fact that Chinese officials, realizing that the balloon had been spotted, did not call to work out a way to deal with it was revealing.
That kind of problem was supposed to be resolved after the 2001 collision of an EP-3 spy plane and a Chinese fighter that brought down both planes. For days after that incident, President George W. Bush could not get Chinese leaders on the phone. Efforts by the secretary of state at the time, Gen. Colin Powell, also failed. “It made you wonder what might happen in a deeper crisis,” General Powell said later.
Afterward, hotlines were set up, and promises made about better communications. Clearly, those failed. When the balloon was shot down, China issued a statement saying “for the United States to insist on using armed forces is clearly an excessive reaction.”
One wonders how Sanger can assert a lack of communication when the Chinese side insists with evidence that it in fact communicated a lot . As the Global Times writes:
The Chinese Foreign Ministry expressed strong dissatisfaction and protested against the US' use of force to shoot down a Chinese civilian unmanned airship, urging the US to properly handle the incident.
The Chinese side has verified the situation and communicated with the US side multiple times, saying the unintended entry of the airship into US airspace was due to force majeure and the incident was totally an accident, the ministry said.
The Chinese foreign ministry asserts similar:
China strongly disapproves of and protests against the US attack on a civilian unmanned airship by force. The Chinese side has, after verification, repeatedly informed the US side of the civilian nature of the airship and conveyed that its entry into the US due to force majeure was totally unexpected. The Chinese side has clearly asked the US side to properly handle the matter in a calm, professional and restrained manner.
So China in fact had communicated with the U.S. and discussed the issue.
Its claim that the ballon went unexpectedly off course is by the way completely correct. The U.S. had long tracked the ballon over Alaska and Canada and was equally surprised when it suddenly turned south:
Another U.S. official said intelligence agencies began tracking the balloon several days ago, not long after it had left China and began its controlled drift toward the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. The official said American trackers continued to monitor the balloon as it progressed through Canada toward the continental United States, and were surprised when it crossed over into American airspace.
The cause of the surprising turn last week was a polar vortex over Canada that also brought a cold snap to the north-east:
We know the feeling when winter digs its heels in, and we get endless days below seasonal. When this happens, the jet stream becomes highly amplified with blocking mechanisms to trap the cold.
We often look to Greenland for strong blocking, but that wasn’t the case. The lobe of the stratospheric polar vortex was free to swing readily across Eastern Canada but then made a swift exit. A ridge of high pressure filled in behind, causing temperatures to rise as fast as they fell.
Such unusual weather patterns happen every once a while but are difficult to predict:
The one certainty this winter is a stretched polar vortex (PV) that favors a cold pattern east of the Rockies in North America. Another stretched PV is happening this week, with the cold arriving this weekend in the Northeastern US. But otherwise, the more lasting impact will be widespread cold to Canada and the Central and Western US. But much uncertainty surrounds this event and subsequent events so my best advice continues to be “the trend is your friend”.
The balloon was on an easterly course over northwest Canada when it was hit by exceptional winds blowing south.
That it was only last week's freak weather event that pushed the balloon across the U.S. makes it unlikely that it was intended to spy on U.S. proper.
China also said that it fired the man responsible for the incident though that claim is probably not fully believable:
Chinese state media on Saturday announced that the head of the country’s weather service was relieved of his duty, in a move seen by some analysts as an attempt to shore up Beijing’s position that the high-altitude balloon was of civilian nature mainly for meteorological purposes.
Zhuang Guotai was the head of China Meteorological Administration until Friday, but his departure from that post was not unexpected. In late January, Zhuang was elected the head of the western Gansu province’s People’s Political Consultative Committee, the provincial political advisory body.
The whole incident clearly happened by accident and was blown up by the Biden administration for political purposes:
However, a day earlier, on Friday, the White House abruptly announced the postponement of a major two-day visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken (during which he was expected to meet President Xi Jinping.)
iden took these extreme steps despite China’s plea that this was “entirely an unexpected situation caused by force majeure and the facts are very clear” and Beijing, in fact, even expressed “regret” (which is tantamount to an amende honorable, as the French would say.)
Furthermore, there was even a conversation on Friday between Blinken and Wang Yi, director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China Central Committee. Beijing’s readout noted that the two top officials “communicated with each other on how to deal with a chance occurrence in a calm and professional manner.”
The initial Chinese Foreign Ministry press releases (here and here) were in a manifestly conciliatory spirit. But Blinken chose to do some grandstanding and took a tough posturing calling it “an irresponsible act and a clear violation of US sovereignty and international law that undermined the purpose” of his forthcoming trip to Beijing.
The purpose of Blinken's planned China trip was to look for some way to split the China-Russia axis. But a recent visit by the deputy of the Chinese foreign minister to Russia had already shown that any such attempts would fail:
Evidently, the Biden Administration realised that one main objective of Blinken’s trip to Beijing — ie., to weaken the Sino-Russian axis — was going to be a non-starter. The US’ sustained efforts to turn the Ukraine conflict as a tool to sabotage China-Russia relations have failed spectacularly. The economic and military ties between Beijing and Moscow are only growing stronger. President Xi Jinping’s expected visit to Russia in spring heralds the steady upward trajectory of in the “no limits” partnership.
The planned bullying of China by a visiting Blinken was shown to be useless and that was the real reason for announcing that no such trip would take place and for blowing up the balloon:
The balloon affair can be regarded as a defining moment. It exposes that while China was approaching Blinken’s visit in good faith with the purpose of finding constructive ways forward, Washington didn’t view things the same way. That said, Beijing was under no illusions, either.
The NYT's false assertion that China failed to communicate during the balloon affair must be seen as part of Blinken's maneuver to push for more hostility towards China. "If they failed to talk they must be guilty of something." But China did in fact talk and it is the U.S. that is sabotaging the relations between the two countries.
Not NYT, NYP (New York Pravda).
This report is a big flat lie. Biden got the Chinese message loud and clear. He wasn’t going to shoot the balloon down until the people’s reaction was received. The bad polling numbers must have outweighed the wishes of his Chicom goodbuddies.
Squirrel! Look over here! Don’t look at a truck load of classified documents we have kept hidden for years and years.
Don’t look at how we are multiplying our incompetence either!
Nincompoops? No, criminal liars.
Stop posting Pro ChiCom nonsence.
Chinese state media on Saturday announced that the head of the country’s weather service was relieved of his duty, in a move seen by some analysts as an attempt to shore up Beijing’s position that the high-altitude balloon was of civilian nature mainly for meteorological purposes....Reasoning like this is why the Daily Kos and Moon of Alabama are liberal-progressive websites, not conservative websites.The whole incident clearly happened by accident and was blown up by the Biden administration for political purposes:
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