The White Home on Monday denied Beijing’s accusation that the US has been sending balloons over China to conduct surveillance, as tensions about espionage rise between the 2 superpowers.

“Any declare that the US authorities operates surveillance balloons over the PRC is fake,” Nationwide Safety Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson stated on Twitter.

Additionally Learn| China says US flew high-altitude balloons over its airspace 10 occasions since final 12 months

“It’s China that has a high-altitude surveillance balloon program for intelligence assortment, that it has used to violate the sovereignty of the US and over 40 nations throughout 5 continents.”

The State Division responded with the same rejection, and known as Beijing’s accusation “the most recent instance of China scrambling to do harm management.”

“It has repeatedly and wrongly claimed the surveillance balloon it despatched over the US was a climate balloon and to at the present time has failed to supply any credible explanations for its intrusion into our airspace and the airspace of others,” a State Division spokesperson stated in a press release.

Earlier Monday China hit again in opposition to US prices of balloon espionage, accusing the US of getting despatched greater than 10 balloons into its airspace since January 2022.

Washington’s response marked the most recent growth in an more and more tense saga that included the downing of an alleged Chinese language spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina earlier this month, after it had traversed a lot of the US.

The US army subsequently shot down three different unidentified objects over North America in current days, sparking widespread jitters and hypothesis as to their origins.

Solely the primary object has been formally attributed to China, with Beijing insisting it was a civilian craft that had blown off beam.

On Monday, White Home spokesman John Kirby stated US authorities “have not been capable of achieve entry” but to the most recent three objects shot down, due largely to climate circumstances which have slowed search and restoration operations.