The Balloon Goes up on China-US Relations

Just when it looked like there might be a slight easing of tension between the United States and China, in late January a very large balloon popped up over the skies of Alaska. By early February, the balloon was flying over Montana and sensitive U.S. military sites, and the Pentagon went public with its assessment that the balloon originated in China. Much of the United States was calling for it to be shot down.

Uncharacteristically, Beijing acknowledged that the massive orb, over 200 feet (61 meters) high and carrying a 2,000-pound (900 kilograms plus) payload equal to the size of three buses, was indeed from China. The Chinese government issued a statement of “regret” for the incursion into U.S. airspace. They had lost control of the balloon, a spokesperson said, although officials repeatedly refused to answer clarifying questions about who, exactly, was responsible for the balloon in the first place. It was only being used for civilian meteorological research, the Chinese government claimed.

It was probably a mistake for China’s Foreign Ministry to have made that last statement, because the United States ultimately (and, many critics complained, far too late) did indeed shoot down the balloon and its payload once it crossed into the Atlantic waters over South Carolina, strategically well within the 12 nautical mile limit that defines U.S. maritime sovereignty. The U.S. miliary successfully recovered the wreckage for analysis, and the U.S. government has since indicated that the balloon was able to engage in surveillance and signals intelligence collection operations, giving it a capability far beyond China's claim that it just wanted to study the weather.

The United States is not on its own in expressing indignation; many other nations (including India, Japan, and the U.K.) are questioning whether or not they have been targeted by Chinese high-altitude balloons floating over their airspace and collecting information their secret and sensitive sites. We already know that another Chinese balloon was found drifting over Latin America in early February, although China again insisted this was a civilian research project gone astray.

The Chinese effort to enter U.S. sovereign territory in order to gather sensitive information came at a surprisingly serendipitous moment. Most obviously, the balloon was over U.S. airspace as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was preparing to embark on a planned visit to China – a trip that was quickly canceled in the wake of the balloon’s discovery. Less remarked upon was the confluence of timing between the balloon incident and the new 118th Republican-led Congress, as well as the beginning of the tenure of new Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy of California.

Indeed, just three-and-a-half weeks prior to the balloon sighting, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bipartisan resolution to create the United States House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. The vote garnered a whopping majority of support in the House – 365 representatives for and only 65 (all Democrats) against – making it possibly the only topic of substance upon which this Congress can overwhelmingly agree.

The resolution authorizing the creation of the committee gave it the mandate and mission “to investigate and submit policy recommendations concerning the status of the economic, technological, and security progress of the Chinese Communist Party and its competition with the United States.”

Clearly, the Chinese balloon incident comes at an opportune time for the new Select Committee. Both the U.S. government as well as U.S. citizens are focused on the balloon story and its significance for U.S. national security – and many media sources now say that there have been at least four other balloons from China that entered U.S. air space over the last five years. It is, ultimately, national security in all of its facets which this congressional committee is tasked with making policy and legislative recommendations to protect.

Heading the Select Committee is Congressman Mike Gallagher of ​Wisconsin, who has been consistently tough on China since his election to the House in ​2017. China watchers and critics will be interested to see if Gallagher can lead the committee to ultimately recommend significant legislation that could result in a major decoupling of the U.S. business, economic, and technological relationships that have been built with China over the last three decades. The committee itself has no legislative jurisdiction and has “no authority to take legislative action on any bill or resolution,” according to the text of the resolution.

Nonetheless, Gallagher is confident of the Select Committee's power to challenge the Chinese Communist Party’s influence. Gallagher told The Diplomat that the committee “will build upon the incredible work of Chairman McCaul on the China Task Force and the ongoing work of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and House Armed Services to counter the CCP’s malign influence wherever it threatens American sovereignty or that of our partners and allies.”

He added, “In a bipartisan fashion, the Select Committee will combat the rising military, economic, and ideological aggression of the Chinese Communist Party, while always distinguishing between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people, who are their primary victims.”

The utter improbability of, and barely-stifled hilarity over, China’s attempted (yet perhaps successful) balloon spy mission underlines a serious point: This is what experts mean when they say that China is using “a whole of nation” approach to vacuum up data and information that will help it to dominate key technologies across the board. The balloon incident has galvanized U.S. focus exactly at the moment when Congress is getting ready to investigate the strategies and tactics that China is using to advance its technological prowess.

The effectiveness of the China Select Committee will be determined by its ability to inspire powerful, targeted legislation that specifically denies the Chinese Communist Party from advancing its goals in the United States. The problem is that the committee does not have long to achieve that aim.

There are three types of committees in the U.S. House of Representatives: standing committees, select committees, and joint committees. Select committees, like the China Select Committee, are not the strongest of the three. Standing committees are permanent; the oldest of these is the Ways and Means Committee, which was originally established as a select committee in 1789, finally becoming a standing committee in 1802.

The Select Committee, by contrast, doesn’t have long to accomplish its business. One deadline for the results of the committee's research and hearings is at the end of 2023. The second deadline is by the end of 2024. There is no mention of re-designating the committee as a standing committee, despite the size, scope, and gravity of its work, and the ongoing threat of its research topic.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy has other China-related issues on his plate, as well. Media reports say that he is planning to visit Taiwan in the spring. Of course, Chinese government officials are already warning him not to make the trip, an effort that will likely only cement McCarthy’s intention to go.

In the meantime, the Select Committee has garnered support from influential business groups. Among those is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which said in a letter to members of the House of Representatives, “It is critical that we hold China accountable for their unfair commercial practices, use of economic coercion, and essential challenge to America’s national security and values.” These “perils,” the Chamber added, “are increasing in frequency and severity…”

The U.S. Chamber makes a distinction between areas of trade with China that benefit the United States and its companies, workers, and farmers, and areas of trade that pose a threat to U.S. national security. As such, the Chamber is “pleased to see that the investigative jurisdiction with which the Select Committee is charged is appropriately focused on the threats to American security.”

What the Chamber did not identify in its statement, however, is that the U.S. footprint in and with China is far greater than just trade. Making the overall relationship more complex is the U.S. investment profile in China. These investments include subsidiaries of, and importantly, replacements for, manufacturing companies and their facilities in the United States. Products produced in these U.S.-invested factories in China are often exported to the United States, of course, but the export destinations of many manufactured goods created by U.S. companies in China also include locations around the world, from Europe to the rest of Asia, underscoring the global nature of supply chains.

On top of those investments, hundreds if not thousands of U.S. companies are partners in research and development (R&D) centers throughout China, in almost every field imaginable. The Chinese partners with whom U.S. and other foreign countries enter into often-cutting edge R&D projects are invariably state-run and Chinese Communist Party-led organizations whose mandate includes the procurement of technologies from foreign competitors.

So, it is to be hoped that the China Select Committee focuses not just on the national security aspects of U.S. trade with China, but also on the activities of U.S.companies manufacturing, researching, and developing technologies in China. Stateside, there is little transparency into U.S. manufacturing companies in China. There is an even smaller window looking into the joint R&D centers in which U.S. companies have joined forces with CCP-sponsored scientists. It should be assumed that there is a lot to see.

Many sources report that the term “the balloon has gone up” was coined during World War I, probably by the British. Whenever enemy activity was suspected, observation balloons were sent up to monitor troop movements. A barrage of shells usually followed. When the balloon went up, it meant impending trouble.

Perhaps it still does.