‘Not Just a Silly Balloon’: Dismay and Fear Over Another U.S.-China Clash

Compared with the unease from Chinese fighter jets racing over the Taiwan Strait or naval standoffs in the South China Sea, the giant Chinese balloon floating over the United States last week looked to many in Asia like a puffy trifle.

But as American officials continue to press the issue, asserting that Chinese spy balloons are part of a global surveillance fleet, it has become impossible to separate the dispute from serious regional anxieties.

“It’s quite clear there is concern,” said Bilahari Kausikan, a former foreign secretary of Singapore, describing his conversations with leaders and foreign policy experts around the region. He added: “It’s not so much a balloon going over the U.S. and other countries, but what might happen in, say, the Taiwan Strait.”

All over Asia, current and former officials seem to still be shaking their heads with dismay. China and the United States had just started to mend their relationship with a meeting in Bali between President Biden and the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, before the Group of 20 summit in November.

Then a big white balloon — China said it was for weather research; U.S. officials called it a spy craft — pushed both countries back to diplomatic distance, bringing another wave of disappointment and fear to a region whose security and prosperity are especially vulnerable to flare-ups between the two superpowers.

Many in Asian policy circles call the inflatable incident a marker of the moment. Stability and peace must be frighteningly fragile, they argue, if a windblown orb can whip up hawkish nationalism and suspend high-level dialogue on issues like nuclear weapons, climate change and trade. With trust in the two behemoths fluctuating in recent years across Asia, surveys show, the balloon battle and its aftermath may only deepen disquiet about how their rivalry shapes decisions that affect the world.

“The reactions on both sides have shown there’s a lack of maturity, a lack of calm,” said Bec Shrimpton, a former Australian defense and foreign affairs official with two decades of experience around the world.

“It is absolutely not just a silly balloon,” she added. “This points to real challenges and problems ahead.”

Asia, or what is increasingly called the Indo-Pacific, from the Himalayas to the Southern Ocean, has long been the forum where Washington and Beijing’s problems (and wealth) have the greatest impact. It is a region of contradictory visions, where the United States is seen as a source of both security and scars, from World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, while China is considered a font of riches but also a potential aggressor.

Doubts about the United States revolve around whether it will maintain consistent engagement. In China’s case, anxieties swirl in the opposite direction: Will Beijing commit to restraint?

When the two nations worked together, Asia boomed: Communists and capitalists rewired the regional economy after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, connecting countries big and small to a degree that no other region can match.

China is the largest trading partner for many of its neighbors, including American allies such as Japan, South Korea and Australia, while the United States fuels growth with investment and imports. Many products, from Indian pharmaceuticals to Korean electronics, start with Chinese components bought by companies with Wall Street financing, and end with profits earned from customers in America.

But as competitive tensions have deepened — especially with China’s aggressive trade tactics and the tariffs enacted by President Donald J. Trump in 2018 — the region has been forced to recalibrate expectations. Military spending is up in many countries. Foreign investment in China has slowed as geopolitical risk intrudes on raw cost-benefit analyses.

“The stability of the relationship is not to be taken for granted,” said Mr. Kausikan, the former Singaporean official. “For several decades, we took that for granted, probably wrongly, but it can’t be taken for granted anymore, by any third party nor by the two principals. Both the U.S. and China have to work at stability — it is not the natural state of affairs.”

The balloon might as well have been an exclamation point for Mr. Kausikan’s recent lecture in India titled “The Future of Global Uncertainty.”

Some analysts called the balloon dispute farcical but significant, highlighting the expansion of what many countries have described as China’s violations of sovereignty in Asia.

“Only the location has changed from the South China Sea and the straits of Taiwan,” said Chun In-Bum, a retired South Korean army lieutenant general. “Now it’s over the continental United States, which is just amazing. It shows how much things can go wrong.”

In Japan, a defense official, Sugio Takahashi, echoed that critique. He said on Twitter that no matter the balloon’s purpose, “an airspace violation is an airspace violation.” Some of Japan’s major newspapers also published editorials lamenting the loss of dialogue and criticizing the Chinese military.

Similar kinds of balloons appeared over Japan in 2020. They were not shot down, but after American officials confirmed that Chinese spy balloons had also been deployed against U.S. allies in the Pacific, Japan’s governing party started discussing whether to do so if another one appears.

“Things might have been completely different if it happened now,” said Kuni Miyake, a former Japanese diplomat. Still, he added, “compared to Japan, the U.S. was much more alarmed, excited and concerned.”

Hugh White, a former Australian defense official, said China and the United States seemed to be caught up in a cycle of overreach and capricious reaction, raising questions about their ability to manage complex relations.

“From Beijing’s side, it is hard to comprehend how the Chinese could have been so unwise as to send such a balloon into U.S. airspace, where it was bound to be detected,” Mr. White said.

“From Washington’s side,” he added, “the Biden administration seems to have mishandled its response, first underreacting and then overreacting.”

He said Washington’s first mistake was not publicly announcing and protesting the intrusion into U.S. airspace when it occurred. Then, after determining that the balloon was not a major threat, he said, “it was equally a mistake to derail progress in the relationship” by canceling a trip by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to Beijing and shooting the balloon down in such a theatrical fashion.

Ms. Shrimpton, a director at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the balloon either demonstrated China’s tolerance for reckless behavior, or showed that its military and political leadership were not in sync — a potentially more dangerous prospect.

Bharat Karnad, an emeritus professor in national security studies at the Center for Policy Research, a think tank in New Delhi, said Beijing seemed to think nothing of risking a confrontation in U.S. airspace. That, he said, suggests “it will have fewer qualms in deploying coercive means against states in its backyard.”

At the same time, he added, the United States responded with an initial hesitation that did not alleviate concern.

“If the U.S. is going to so be easily scared of potential Chinese reaction,” he said, “how much greater will be its reluctance to assist its strategic partners and allies in Asia in a crisis triggered by China?”

It is hard to tell if such questions will linger. In the meantime, the balloon has become a source of humor. An Australian satirical news site, The Betoota Advocate, jokingly reported that the balloon was actually part of a gender reveal gone wrong. China’s consul general in Northern Ireland asked on Twitter: “Does anyone else find this balloon fiasco to be nothing more than a bunch of hot air?”

Those unlikely to laugh: people whose businesses and lives depend on the United States and China finding ways to compete, peacefully.

Arup Raha, the chief economist in Asia for Oxford Economics, a global research firm, said that especially in Asian business circles, people were tired of seeing one feud follow another.

“They’re probably all just rolling their eyes and saying, ‘Oh, no, another incident,’” he said.

Then he, too, turned serious about America and China.

“We’d really like them to get along,” he said. “It would be a great help if they would.”

Hari Kumar and Motoko Rich contributed reporting.