WASHINGTON – Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said on Thursday that China’s surveillance balloon had entered US territorial airspace “in clear violation of our sovereignty and international law.” She also said that “along the way, we learned a thing or two” about China’s use of the balloon.
Testifying in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), the Committee’s chairman, asked Sherman about Iran-China relations. “Iran gets to export its oil, despite US sanctions, and Beijing receives a steep discount,” he said. “What is the administration doing to increase the cost on China for helping Iran evade US sanctions? How does it plan to make a measurable dent in Iran’s oil exports to China and others such that Iran is not reaping the benefits of steady oil prices?”
Sherman replied that the administration is “working on sanctions evasion, including by seeing what’s happening to tankers around the world and taking actions that we can to interdict and stop those oil shipments and to sanction those companies that are undermining our sanctions regime around Iranian oil.”
“I agree with you, this is a problem,” she told Menendez
The chairman replied by saying that “you don’t hide a million barrels a day for the last three months and not know it’s out there, and it’s happening – and it’s happening largely with impunity. We should be doing much better.”
In her remarks, Sherman said that China is “the only competitor with the intent and means to reshape the international order.
She gave as an example the Chinese “provocations in the South China Sea, its human rights abuses, its use of economic coercion, its threatening behavior against Taiwan – and, of course, what we have just witnessed last week..
“The American people saw the latest example of that reality,” said Sherman. “After the US government detected, closely tracked, and shot down the PRCs high altitude surveillance balloon that had entered our territorial airspace in clear violation of our sovereignty and international law.”
US response to the balloon
“The Biden-Harris administration responded swiftly to protect Americans and safeguard against the balloon’s collection of sensitive information,” she continued. “We made clear to PRC officials that the presence of this surveillance balloon was unacceptable. And along the way, we learned a thing or two, which you’ll hear in the classified briefing about the PRC’s use of the balloon.”
“We will confront the dangers posed by the PRC with resolve and keep demonstrating that violations of any country’s sovereignty are unacceptable,” the deputy secretary of state said. “This irresponsible act put on full display what we’ve long recognized: that the PRC has become more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad. It reinforced the need for us to double down on our strategy, invest, align, compete.”
She also addressed the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. “The numbers of those lost keep rising,” she said. “Our hearts ache for the families and communities devastated by this tragedy. I know that we all express our solidarity and are doing whatever we can for those who are suffering – and we’ll do whatever we can to support the recovery in the days and months ahead. It is truly a tragic, tragic, situation – for all the people in the region.”