Sending a spy balloon was a 'clumsy' move by China that 'put a missile' through an already bad situation with the US, foreign policy expert says

• The Chinese spy balloon "put a missile" through an already strained relationship with the US, an expert said.
• It symbolized "an increasingly hostile relationship" with Beijing, said the expert in Chinese-US relations.

The Chinese spy balloon that floated above America and sparked a diplomatic crisis was a "clumsy" move by Beijing that "put a missile" through an already strained relationship with the United States, a China expert said.

The 200-foot-tall, high-altitude balloon — which first appeared last week over continental America and was ultimately shot down by a US fighter jet — symbolized "for everyone in the world, particularly in America, that we are in an increasingly hostile relationship," Orville Schell, the director of the Center on US-China Relations at Asia Society in New York told Insider.

The balloon incident also torpedoed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's high-stakes trip to China. The US indefinitely postponed the visit just hours before he was due to depart and further stripped the two superpower countries of a chance to ease tensions.

Schell explained that the US-China relationship has been on a "downward spiral," and Blinken's visit to Beijing was supposed to try to "slow down" that trend.

The Chinese balloon was an "incredibly clumsy gesture" on Beijing's part and it "deprived us of a very important moment to arrest the downward spiral," Schell said.

"The balloon incident put a missile not only through the balloon," Schell said, "But through what we hoped would be an interaction with Blinken, [Chinese President Xi Jinping, and senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi] that could have slowed down this process and possibly altered the course of the downward spiral."

Additionally, the presence of the massive surveillance balloon allowed Americans across the country "to see in the most dramatic way … Chinese incursion into American airspace," said Schell.

"You couldn't have a more toxic example that would inflame everyone," the longtime China observer added.

Former President Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers were quick to call for the US to shoot down the balloon before the US Air Force used its top air superiority fighter, the F-22 Raptor, to fire a single air-to-air missile at the balloon, downing it after it passed over the Atlantic Ocean.

"Every human being on the North American continent sees this symbol of China's animosity towards America and that they're spying on America," Schell said, "And it makes it harder and harder and harder to do diplomacy."

The Biden administration revealed this week that the Chinese military has targeted more than 40 countries across five continents with high-altitude surveillance balloons like the one the US shot down.

And though Beijing has admitted that the downed balloon belonged to China, it has insisted it was a weather balloon that blew off course. China has even put blame on the US, saying that it "overreacted" by shooting down the balloon and accused it of waging information "warfare" against Beijing.

The situation, Schell said, has been "very poorly managed by China."

"China has a face issue. And it has a very difficult time acknowledging any fault," said the foreign policy scholar. "And this has a lot to do with the stature of a big leader like Xi Jinping who's supposed to be infallible."

Another China expert, Bonnie Glaser, the managing director of Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund think tank, called the balloon incident "unfortunate" and said it "sets back" progress between the US and China, but explained that there are indications that China wants to get the relationship "back on what they consider to be at least a more stable track."

"There's enormous mutual distrust and both sides are always trying to identify vulnerabilities in the other and advantages. That said, all the signals coming from China is that while they don't want to look weak to their domestic audience, they don't want this incident to rupture the relationship," Glaser told Insider.

Glaser added that it is also not in the US' interests "to completely rupture" its relationship with China.

"But it is going to take time to begin to re-engage in dialogue with China," said Glaser. "I don't think anybody's thinking right now about when Blinken should go."