Chinese (gasp) hypocrisy

Well, seems the Chinese do have their knickers a bit twisted over the Great Balloon Shoot-Down of 2023. Describing the US’ reactions as over-the-top:

 The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Monday that the US shooting down a suspected Chinese spy balloon Saturday was “unacceptable and irresponsible.”

China said both balloons were “of civilian nature and used for flight test.” Pentagon officials, however, have said both balloons are likely surveillance devices.

The other balloon is the one spotted over Costa Rica and Colombia – supposedly it was shadowed by local air forces who chose not to shoot it down, as it wasn’t posing an active threat. Reuters   Colombia has the resources to tag a balloon at 55,000 feet,  although its fighter force of Israeli Kfirs is a couple of decades old – they supposedly have an operational ceiling of 58,000 feet or so.

But China and the pro-Communist bloc (ie. Venezuela) are condemning the shoot down… what a surprise.

China is upset that the US shot down its balloon, a suspected surveillance asset, on Saturday, but a state TV video clip from 2020 features a segment boasting about how Chinese fighter pilots can locate and shoot down spy balloons.

The video from China Central Television (CCTV), translated by Insider, follows an apparent training exercise involving surveillance balloons.

In the video, an alarm bell prompts a fighter pilot to prepare and board a fighter jet that appears to be the Chinese J-10, a multi-role aircraft built for air-to-air combat and strike missions.

A CCTV narrator described the action, saying that loading missiles, powering up, checking the fuselage, and other procedures were all completed quickly.

A pilot is then ordered to shoot it down with a missile.

The CCTV documentary said “the white balloon exploded with the launch of a missile from the fighter jet’s left wing,” adding that it only took about 30 seconds for the pilot to lock onto and then destroy the target.

Business Insider

So they condemn our shooting their balloon down…yet brag about their ability to shoot someone else’s down. With that level of hypocrisy, you would think they were American politicians?

Speaking of hypocrisy – the Democrats are excoriating Trump about “three prior balloons over US airspace about which he did nothing” – we have seen that aired here at TAH as well. Well, seems there is some truth to that, in that it happened…BUT it was not discovered until after Biden took office. So when the the Trump folks say it was never reported to them, they are factually correct. And when Lars and company squeal that the previous administration did nothing, they are being ingenuous at best – although I think “hypocritical” is closer to the truth. Seems our missile detection systems have been set to pick up fast-moving intruders, like bombers and ICBMs, and to filter out large slow returns like flocks of geese, etc. The Chinese rather cleverly sent balloons whose signals’ returns our radar rejected, so until some bright boy said “let’s look at the records” no one was aware of said prior balloons. Gee, you would think that would make sense to an ex-MI officer.*

*Still remember seeing an officer candidate in the ’80s push-uping his way to China after his TAC officer, a female MI Captain, asked him why he was branching Infantry when his prior service was in an ASA/CEWI unit. “Because I think MI officers are wimps, Ma’am.”  The look on her face…

Category: China, Foreign Policy, None