Balloon row can’t hide reality that US and China need one another

The sighting of a large Chinese balloon above Billings, Montana last week, which was viewed at first as an almost trivial incident, has become a real threat to efforts to stabilise the relationship between Washington and Beijing. Although the Pentagon said the balloon was engaged in surveillance, it presented no “military or physical threat” or a significant intelligence-gathering risk.

China expressed regret over the incursion into US airspace, an unusual step for Beijing, saying the balloon was a civilian craft gathering mostly meteorological data. US secretary of state Antony Blinken postponed a planned visit to Beijing but he told Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, that the US remained committed to diplomatic engagement and open lines of communication and would be prepared to reschedule the visit when conditions were right.

Wang said that in the face of unexpected situations, the two sides should communicate in a timely manner and try to control their differences and avoid mistakes. But as images of the balloon dominated cable news channels, the White House came under political pressure to respond aggressively and it bowed to that pressure.

The balloon incident is precisely the kind of event that Washington and Beijing hoped to prevent escalating by establishing lines of communication between the two capitals. Postponing Blinken’s visit means leaving both sides exposed for longer to the risk of unexpected events spiralling into full-blown crises.

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There is plenty of scope for things to go wrong over the next few months and incoming House speaker Kevin McCarthy is reported to be planning to visit Taiwan, something China has urged him not to do. When his predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, went to Taiwan last year, China responded with a series of unprecedented military exercises that encircled the island and fired a missile across it.

When Biden and Xi Jinping met in Bali last November, they agreed that they should try to prevent the competition between the United States and China from boiling over into conflict. The reasons both leaders sought to take the heat out of their rivalry last November remain just as persuasive today.

Neither side can afford an uncontrolled slide into military confrontation or an accelerated economic decoupling, and trade between the US and China has continued to grow despite political tensions. Both sides need one another if they want to address climate change and they could soon share an interest in operating in concert to broker an end to the war in Ukraine.