Blinken meets with China, gets no apology for spy balloon incident 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Wang Yi, China’s most senior diplomat, in Munich this weekend, but says he did not receive an official apology from China over the recent spy balloon incident that made global headlines and raised military tensions between the two countries.

Blinken and Wang met at the Munich Security Conference, an annual international security conference in Germany, in the first in-person meeting of the two countries since China floated a spy balloon over the continental US early this month, prompting the US military to shoot it down off the South Carolina coast. The meeting occurred on the sidelines of the conference on Saturday.

A State Department spokesperson said after the meeting that the two discussed the balloon in the meeting, but China did not apologize for the scuffle. “The Secretary directly spoke to the unacceptable violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law by the PRC high-altitude surveillance balloon in U.S. territorial airspace, underscoring that this irresponsible act must never again occur,” said the spokesman.

Blinken indicated to NBC’s Chuck Todd in an interview that the two also discussed the provision of arms to Russia by China for use in the Kremlin’s ongoing assault on Ukraine. “We are very concerned that China is considering providing lethal support to Russia in its aggression against Ukraine and I made clear that that would have serious consequences in our relationship,” Blinken said.