- **Financial Times on the balloon(s) furor: **
If the aircraft was a surveillance operation, it would raise serious concerns about decision-making at the top of China’s policy apparatus just as Xi prepares to begin his precedent-breaking third term as president. Backed by a new slate of loyalists, Xi’s elevation at the annual session of China’s rubber-stamp parliament next month will cement his status as the country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.
The Biden administration said Chinese surveillance balloons had transited the US on only a handful of occasions over the past six years, suggesting that last week’s alleged spy mission was either approved by Xi despite the risks or was a relatively rare operation that he was unaware of, an unsettling prospect for both Washington and Beijing.
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[An open question is whether Xi Jinping knew about the mission and approved it], and what the assumptions were about its potential impact on [US] relations,” said Drew Thompson at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.“We don’t know whether this demonstrates that the People’s Liberation Army is not co-ordinating politically sensitive missions with the party leadership, or whether the PLA is throwing a wrench into Xi Jinping’s effort to lower the temperature of the US-China relationship.” (
Source: ft.com)
