WASHINGTON — The Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, stated on Friday that the Chinese surveillance balloon that crossed the United States earlier this month was “not helpful,” days after stating that the invasion should not affect US-China ties.
“As it relates to the Chinese balloon, we shot it down because it needed to be shot down,” Harris told MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell. “We were confident that China was using it to spy on the American people.”
Harris did not explicitly respond to Mitchell’s inquiry on the Chinese government’s claims that the flight route was unintentional.
Harris responded, “We will maintain our perspective on what the relationship between China and the United States should be.”
“This is not going to change, but we shot down the balloon because it was useless.”
Harris, who gave the interview while attending the annual Munich Security Conference in Germany, stated in a previous interview published by Politico on Wednesday that the spy balloon shouldn’t have a detrimental impact on U.S. relations with China.
The vice president said, “I don’t think so.”
The Biden administration has fluctuated between sympathetic and harsh denunciation of the Chinese balloon, which was shot down off the coast of South Carolina on February 4 in response to tremendous political pressure for allowing it to fly over American military locations.
The balloon was not brought down earlier, according to administration officials, since it was unsafe to do so on land and the device’s components would be easier to remove from the ocean.
On Thursday afternoon, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre blasted China’s “irresponsible actions” and stated that the fate of relations was up to Beijing.
In his own remarks, the 80-year-old Biden stated that the “violation of our sovereignty is unacceptable,” but added that the United States would “continue to engage with China, as we have for the past several weeks.”
Since the beginning of my administration, I have stated that we seek competition, not conflict, with China.
We are not interested in a new Cold War.
»Kamala Harris: China spy balloon is ‘unhelpful’ to US-China relations«