China threatens the US for shooting down the spy balloon. How do they plan on retaliating?

China is going on the offensive after the US downed a suspected spy balloon on 4 February off the East Coast that flew over the United States and Canada. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said that Beijing “will take countermeasures against relevant US entities” in retaliation for what it deems Washington using the incident “as a pretext to illegally sanction Chinese companies and institutions.”

The threat comes after the US sanctioned six Chinese entities it accuses of being part of Beijing’s aerospace programs linked to what Washington has said is a worldwide surveillance program using high-altitude balloons. Furthermore, China is now accusing the United States of overflying several of its provinces with high-altitude balloons, something Washington emphatically denies.

How does China plan on retaliating against the US?

“The US has abused force, overreacted, escalated the situation, and used this as a pretext to illegally sanction Chinese companies and institutions,” Wang said speaking at a daily briefing. “China is firmly opposed to this and will take countermeasures against relevant US entities that undermine China’s sovereignty and security in accordance with the law.”

The Foreign Ministry spokesperson did not specify how, which nor the number of entities Beijing would sanction. He repeated counter-accusations against the US claiming that American balloons have flown over China.

“Without the approval of relevant Chinese authorities, [the US] has illegally flown at least 10 times over China’s territorial airspace, including over Xinjiang, Tibet and other provinces,” said Wang.

China claims balloon US shoot down was for scientific purposes

Beijing has admitted that the balloon was Chinese but has not said to which company or government department it belonged. China denies that the unmanned airship, the size of two or three buses, was a military asset, claiming instead that it was a scientific research weather balloon that was accidentally blown off course.

They accuse Washington of overreaching when the US military used a missile launched from an F-22 fighter jet to down the aircraft off the coast of South Carolina.

US says that the “weather balloon” was in fact a spy balloon

US officials say that Chinese balloon was a surveillance platform, which they originally said was first spotted flying over the Aleutian Islands and then traversed Alaska, Canada and the US mainland. However, according to new reporting the balloon had been tracked from the time it took off from its home base in Hainan Island off the south coast of China. Due to its size and altitude, flying at 60,000 feet, the Pentagon advised against downing the object until there was no risk of harm to people under its flight path.

After shooting down the balloon over shallow waters a recovery effort prepared in advance got underway. Salvage crews have already pulled wreckage from the Atlantic Ocean and teams have been sifting through the debris. The Pentagon says that so far they have found antennae capable of intercepting and geolocating communication signals among portions of the airship that have been recovered.