She was talking with As we speak this morning after the US army destroyed a suspected Chinese language spy balloon off the Carolina coast after it traversed delicate army websites throughout North America.
“I believe the US has managed this as carefully as possible. They brought the balloon down over their own territorial waters.
“They’ve expressed a continued need to interact, and we might encourage that to be responded to positively by the Chinese language authorities.”
The presence of the balloon in the skies above the US dealt a severe blow to already strained US-Chinese relations that have been in a downward spiral for years.
It prompted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to abruptly cancel a high-stakes Beijing trip aimed at easing tensions.
Wong stressed the incident would not deter the Australian government from trying to rebuild relations with China while working with the US to ease tensions in the Asia Pacific region.
“The extra vital factor is what occurs now.
“We want a stable, peaceful prosperous region and world. That means the great powers, which are in competition, engage, make sure there are guard rails around that competition to ensure that there isn’t escalation.”
China responded to the US motion by declaring that it reserved the best to “take further actions” and criticised the US for “an obvious overreaction and a serious violation of international practice.”
A former US nationwide safety professional informed As we speak this morning the balloon shot down by the US army was most likely a part of a wider Chinese language surveillance community throughout the Asia Pacific.
Anthony Shaffer, who served as senior intelligence officer within the US military, mentioned Australia must be involved concerning the spy balloons.
He pointed to remarks by US Senator Marco Rubio who claimed the same Chinese language balloon had been seen over Hawaii, a key Pacific naval base.
“My concern is obviously Hawaii our territories, you’re all in that kind of area, you’re closer to China than we are.
“That is one thing everyone must be involved about.”
Shaffer said he was also concerned the balloons could become “weaponised”. He pointed to how the Japanese fitted explosive devices to high altitude balloons during World War II and flew them over the north west US.
“That is one thing we should be apprehensive about. It’s probably what do they put beneath that balloon that might be probably weaponised.”
Former FBI counter-terrorism expert Peter Strzok told Today the balloon was a large sophisticated structure and was probably capable of gathering detailed intelligence.
He said the US military’s next move will be recovering its wreckage for analysis.
“One of many issues the army and intelligence neighborhood will likely be is what kind of tools was being carried.
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“There was some indication it was including the solar panels approximately 90 feet (28m) long. That’s a fairly large platform and fair amount of collection sensors and other equipment might be on there.”
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