China says more than ten U.S. high-altitude balloons have flown in its airspace during the past year without its permission.
The statement follows Washington's accusation that Beijing operates a fleet of surveillance balloons around the world, and after the U.S. shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon that had crossed from Alaska to South Carolina.
"It is also common for U.S. balloons to illegally enter the airspace of other countries," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a daily briefing, per the Associated Press. "Since last year, U.S. high-altitude balloons have illegally flown over China’s airspace more than 10 times without the approval of Chinese authorities."
While making the accusations, Wang gave no details about the alleged U.S. balloons, how they had been dealt with or whether they had government or military links, the AP reported.
Wang added that the U.S. should "first reflect on itself and change course, rather than smear and instigate a confrontation," according to the AP.
The U.S. denies that it operates any surveillance balloons over China.
"Any claim that the US government operates surveillance balloons over the [People's Republic of China] is false," National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said on Twitter. "This is the latest example of China scrambling to do damage control."
China has said the U.S. overreacted when it shot down what it called a meteorological balloon that had been blown off course on Feb. 4. U.S. intelligence officials say it wasn't a weather balloon but rather a suspected spy balloon linked to a massive aerial surveillance program that targeted more than 40 countries.
Since then, three more "unidentified objects" have been shot down over North America.
U.S. officials confirmed in a press briefing Sunday that the military took down an unidentified aerial object over Lake Huron in Michigan because it posed a threat to civilian aviation. The military also took down a "high-altitude object" over Alaska on Friday, and then Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordered the North American Aerospace Defense Command to shoot down an unidentified object over the territory of Yukon on Saturday.
The origins and intentions of the latest three objects have not yet been revealed.
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