U.S. says may target Chinese entities linked to spy balloon’s incursion

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will explore taking action against entities connected to the Chinese military that supported the incursion by a Chinese spy balloon into U.S. airspace last week, a senior State Department official said on Thursday.

Washington is confident that the manufacturer of the Chinese spy balloon, shot down by the U.S. military last weekend off the U.S. East Coast, has a “direct relationship” with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the department official added.

The appearance of the Chinese balloon over the United States last week caused political outrage in Washington and prompted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a trip to Beijing that both countries had hoped would patch their frayed relations. Blinken would have arrived in Beijing on Sunday.

A U.S. Air Force fighter jet shot down the balloon off the South Carolina coast on Saturday, a week after it first entered U.S. airspace. China’s foreign ministry has said it was a weather balloon that had blown off course and accused the United States of overreacting.

“The United States will also explore taking action against PRC entities linked to the PLA that supported the balloon’s incursion into U.S. airspace,” a senior State Department official said in a statement.

“We are confident that the balloon manufacturer has a direct relationship with China’s military and is an approved vendor of the PLA, according to information published in an official procurement portal for the PLA,” the official said.

The company also advertises balloon products on its website and hosts videos from past flights, which appear to have overflown at least U.S. airspace and the airspace of other countries, the official said, without naming the business.

The official said the United States has collected high-resolution imagery of the balloon from U-2 aircraft flybys that revealed it was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations.

China had conducted similar surveillance flights over more than 40 countries on five continents, the official said.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Michael Martina; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)