By Amin Kef (Ranger)
China expressed strong dissatisfaction and protest on Sunday against the US’ move to shoot down a non-threatening Chinese airship for civilian use, calling the US’ move an overreaction and vowing to reserve the right to take necessary actions. By turning an unintentional accident into an incident that has been hyped by the US officials and media, Washington is adding new uncertainties into the already-intense relations with China, creating a bad precedent for blurring the line between civilian and military uses, experts said.
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 Ministry said on Friday that the balloon 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.
Although the US knows that this airship is harmless, it insisted on shooting it down to maintain its dominant position and it’s also believed that the US is very interested in our related technology so that it needs to obtain it in such improper way, Lü Xiang, research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences gave his opinions on Sunday.
It is more of a political show, as the balloon was only shot down after it already travelled across the US and was about to leave, experts said.
Some experts also believe that shooting down a harmless airship is like “shooting down an unarmed civilian,” creating a bad precedent for interaction between China and the US.
It’s widely known that US aircraft, appearing in civilian or military purposes, operate around China much more frequent than Chinese aircraft do around the US, Lü noted.
“If the US does not differentiate between civilian and military aircraft, then it has made a very bad precedent in treating the China-US relations,” he said.
It must be underscored that already there has been a frosty relationship between the two world powers or countries bordering on trade, Taiwan and South China Sea.
This recent one involving the shooting down of the balloon, it is feared, may heighten the rift between the two and may either lead to future escalations which may not augur well for the maintenance and improvement of international stability if diplomatic steps are not taken to deescalate the rising tension.
It is only imperative that the two sides put aside the mistrust, improve on relationship, take affirmative actions on international issues and continue to improve on World Peace and helping poorer nations like Sierra Leone to emerge from the bottomless abyss of poverty.
