Like a giant balloon, US-China relations have strayed far off course

The wandering balloon and Washington’s decision to shoot it down have become yet another bone of contention between the US and China
The deterioration of Sino-US relations is no doubt accelerating, and hopes to stabilise ties are fading fast

Xu Xiaobing

Published: 3:30am, 9 Mar 2023

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The start of the Year of the Rabbit will be remembered for a number of things, not least of which are two “wandering” entities.

The first is the popular Chinese science fiction movie The Wandering Earth II, released on January 22. Adapted from a novella by Liu Cixin, who is best known for his bestselling novel The Three Body Problem, the film sees China unite with the rest of the world in a race against time to save the Earth. Together, nations build huge engines to propel the planet out of our solar system, away from the dying sun, and begin a journey across the universe to find a new home.

The film received a rather poor review from The New York Times, but it performed well in China and now ranks among the top 10 highest-grossing Chinese films of all time, joining its predecessor The Wandering Earth.

The second is the huge Chinese balloon first spotted flying over North America on January 28 and shot down by the military on February 4 just as it was about to leave US airspace, in a burst of American nationalism. After the balloon was downed, the House of Representatives and Senate, on February 9 and 15 respectively, voted unanimously to adopt separate resolutions accusing China of violating US sovereignty.

China told Canadian and US authorities that the balloon was a meteorological airship that entered their skies by force majeure. However, the US insists it was a spy balloon and refuses to return the fragments of the downed balloon to China.

The incident became not only an easy excuse for US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a scheduled visit to China, but also one of the major issues that he confronted top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi about on February 18 during their one-hour unofficial meeting at the 56th Munich Security Conference. Both sides simply reiterated their diametrically opposed positions.

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China’s top diplomat urges US to ‘avoid misjudgment’ as Blinken trip postponed over balloon issue

So far, the US has failed to provide any evidence to show that the Chinese wandering balloon was a spying instrument, or any evidence that would justify the US making such a big fuss. It was, in Wang’s words, a “political farce” and a “mind-boggling and almost hysterical action”.

In response to US accusations, China issued a report on February 20 titled “US Hegemony and Its Perils”, accusing the US of five types of behaviour: political hegemony, in throwing its weight around; military hegemony, through wanton use of force; economic hegemony, through looting and exploitation; technological hegemony, through monopoly and suppression; and cultural hegemony, in the spreading of false narratives.

The report was published close to the 51st anniversary of former US president Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China on February 21, 1972.

Under the current circumstances, in which the US perceives China as “the most consequential geopolitical challenge and strategic competitor”, it is obvious that the third thing now wandering off course is the Sino-US relationship. While the Wandering Earth scenario is fictitious, the wandering balloon and Sino-US relations are both harsh realities.

As many have pointed out, the Wandering Earth film series has vividly displayed the differences between Chinese values, world views and heroic models and those of the Americans. Most importantly, in the film, it is the Chinese who play the leading role in saving the Earth.

People pass a poster advertising A Wandering Earth II at a cinema in Yichang, Hubei province, China, on January 22. Photo: CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

In reality, while Russia is resisting Nato enlargement in Europe, China is confronting attempts for an Asian version of Nato.

Locked in a fierce competition in almost all key areas of state power, wandering Sino-US relations are a real threat to international peace and development, as China and the US are not only the world’s top two economies and among the strongest military powers, but also two of the “big five” in the UN Security Council, as well as nuclear powers.

Today, the real threat to humans is not a wandering Earth. Rather, it is relations among major world powers that are spinning out of control.

If few could have expected such a burst of US nationalism from a wandering balloon, it’s easy to imagine a burst of Chinese nationalism over the Taiwan issue. On February 16, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced sanctions against two US arms dealers, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, for their arms sales to Taiwan, the first move of its kind since the Provisions on the List of Unreliable Entities entered into force in September 2020.

The deterioration of Sino-US relations is no doubt accelerating, and hopes to stabilise ties are fading fast.

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Is it too late for China and the US to settle their profound differences and coexist peacefully while competing fairly before the worst happens? As the English writer John R.R. Tolkien wrote in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, “Not all those who wander are lost.”

While the US has repeatedly denied that it is involved in a cold war with China or that it has changed its one-China policy, President Joe Biden has said several times that the US is committed to defending Taiwan.

Whether this is just more mind wandering on his part, it is certain that Sino-US relations are off course and there may be catastrophic consequences, as Foreign Minister Qin Gang, the former Chinese ambassador to the US, warned on March 7.

Xu Xiaobing is director of the Centre of International Law Practice at Shanghai Jiao Tong University Law School