Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken held what American officials described as an hourlong, confrontational meeting in Munich with China’s top foreign policy official on Saturday night. It was a testy resumption of diplomatic contact between Washington and Beijing after a breakdown tied to the downing of a Chinese spy balloon over U.S. territory.
The impromptu meeting, on the margins of the Munich Security Conference, happened while the two nations were still very much at odds. Hours earlier, the Chinese official, Wang Yi, had doubled down on China’s claim that the balloon was a “civilian” research craft blown off course by high winds, calling the American decision to shoot it down “absurd and hysterical.”
The balloon episode has inflamed U.S.-China tensions at a time when the relationship was already at one of its lowest points in decades. American officials say the balloon carried equipment that “was clearly for intelligence surveillance” as part of a global surveillance fleet directed by China’s military.
A statement released later Saturday night by the State Department portrayed Mr. Blinken as taking a stern tone in the meeting, and a senior State Department official, speaking on background, also stressed that Mr. Blinken had been “blunt” with the Chinese official.
Mr. Blinken “made clear the United States will not stand for any violation of our sovereignty,” the State Department spokesman, Ned Price, said in the statement, adding that China’s high-altitude surveillance balloon program “has been exposed to the world.”
The secretary of state also renewed warnings that China should not assist Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, amid growing concerns that Beijing was edging closer to doing just that. And U.S. officials would not say whether that the two sides had made plans for further contact, even though President Biden said last week he hoped to speak with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
In her remarks at the Munich conference earlier on Saturday, Vice President Kamala Harris had also warned China, saying that the United States would react sharply should Beijing supply Moscow with military aid, a step it has so far not taken, according to U.S. officials.
The Chinese Spy Balloon Showdown
The discovery of a Chinese surveillance balloon floating over the United States has added to the rising tensions between the two superpowers.
China offered its own brief account of the meeting via Beijing’s official Xinhua News Service, which noted that the encounter — which it said had been sought by the U.S. side — had been “informal.” It added that Mr. Wang had demanded that the U.S. “solve the damage caused by the indiscriminate use of force to Sino-U.S. relations.”
Mr. Blinken had also stressed to Mr. Wang “the importance of maintaining diplomatic dialogue and open lines of communication at all times,” the State Department said. He added, using the initials for People’s Republic of China, that “we do not want conflict with the P.R.C. and are not looking for a new Cold War.”
That phrase was particularly notable given that Mr. Wang had said, during remarks Saturday morning at the conference, that “the Cold War mentality is back” in global affairs.
The meeting came two weeks after Mr. Blinken abruptly canceled a long-planned trip to Beijing when the United States detected the balloon floating across the country. The U.S. military eventually shot it down over the Atlantic Ocean. American officials said they were confident they had prevented it from collecting any sensitive data from U.S. nuclear sites and military bases.
The trip had been intended as a step toward soothing relations between the United States and China that have grown fraught in recent years, with some analysts worried about the growing potential for future military conflict between the two powers. Mr. Blinken has said he will reschedule his visit to China “when conditions allow.”
The canceled trip and a subsequent war of words instead set relations back further. After President Biden ordered the craft shot down, China rejected a request from Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III to speak with his Chinese counterpart — a development that U.S. officials called troubling.
China initially had a contrite tone about the balloon, saying that it was a weather craft that had drifted off course. But in the following days — especially after the U.S. military identified and shot down three other unknown objects that it now concedes were probably innocuous craft — Beijing’s tone hardened.
The United States may have irked Chinese officials by publicizing Beijing’s balloon surveillance over what Biden administration officials described as including dozens of other nations around the world.
Mr. Wang was defiant on the subject in his formal remarks at the security conference earlier Saturday. He called the United States’ reaction an effort “to divert attention from its domestic problems.”
Mr. Wang said shooting down the balloon “does not show that the U.S. is strong.” He added, “On the contrary, it shows the opposite.”
“We asked the United States to handle it calmly and professionally based on consultation with the Chinese side,” Mr. Wang said. “Regrettably, the United States disregarded these facts and used advanced fighter jets and downed a balloon with its missiles.”
“This is 100 percent an abuse of the use of force,” he said, adding that the United States had violated an international convention governing airspace.
In the days after shooting down the Chinese balloon, American fighter jets downed three more objects over North America, which U.S. officials now say they believe were harmless and probably not from China.
“Across the globe, there are many balloons in the sky from different countries,” Mr. Wang said. “Do you want to down each and every one of them?”
Mr. Wang has been using the conference in Munich as a platform to tell European leaders and diplomats that China is ready to bolster ties with them and to try to play a role in ending the war in Ukraine. His charm offensive toward them comes after Mr. Xi ended his “zero Covid” policy this winter, paving the way for the country to step back into the spotlight on the world stage.
The Chinese government is grappling with a slowing economy and is seeking to bolster trade ties with Europe, amid animosity fueled in part by China’s diplomatic support of Russia.
Mr. Wang also met with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany on the sidelines of the Munich conference on Saturday, and afterward, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said on Twitter that China was “ready to fully resume exchanges with Germany and other European countries in various fields.”
Edward Wong contributed reporting from Washington.
