China reiterated that the unmanned civilian airship that flew over US territory was purely an “unexpected and isolated event,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, according to the press statement released by the ministry.
While responding to a question about the unmanned airship, Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Mao Ning said, “We have made it clear time and again that the unmanned Chinese civilian airship drifting over the US was a purely unexpected and isolated event caused by force majeure.”
She also stated, “China firmly rejects distortion, hyping up and political manipulation of this unexpected and isolated event.”
China made it clear that the unmanned airship is a civilian airship that is used for meteorological and other research purposes, the statement read.
However, even after asking multiple times about the company that the aircraft belongs to, Mao doesn’t respond.
These questions came after the United States Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said that America is still assessing the parts that were recovered from the balloon and precautionary steps were taken in time to limit the intelligence value that it would be able to collect.
Responding to media queries on whether the balloon was able to transmit intelligence back to China, she added that the US took steps to protect its own military installations from foreign intelligence collection by taking preventive measures.
“So, on the balloon itself, right now, the FBI is leading, still assessing the parts that we were able to recover from the balloon. As we mentioned early on when we first started tracking the balloon, we do know that the balloon was able to be manoeuvred and purposely driven along its track but not going to get into specific sites it was able to hover over,” the Pentagon Spokeswoman revealed.
“But what we did do is take precautionary steps to limit the intelligence value that it would be able to collect and, you know, again, we — we took steps to protect our own military installations from foreign intelligence collection,” Pentagon Spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said during the press briefing.
Speaking further, the Pentagon spokesperson said that due to the immediate steps the US took at that point in time, “we were able to prevent transmission of certain aspects of our sites to be transmitted.”
On transmission back to the PRC and what was able to be transmitted back, she said, “I just don’t have further information for you at this time. As of right now, we’re still doing an assessment of what exactly the intel was that China was able to gather, but we do know that the steps that we took provided little additive value for what they’ve been able to collect on from satellites before.”
The suspected Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon, before being shot down by the US forces was hovering in the nation’s airspace for a few days.