China Calls Biden UFO Shootdowns ‘Absurd and Expensive’ Performance Art

Chinese state media on Monday chided the Biden administration for engaging in “absurd and expensive large-scale political behavioral art” by shooting down a Chinese spy balloon and a series of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) that entered American and Canadian airspace over the weekend.

China’s state-run Global Times claimed to have measured some “dramatic effect in global public opinion” created by the U.S. Air Force launching advanced aircraft like the F-22 to take out UFOs, an exercise the Chinese propagandists likened to “shooting a mosquito with a cannon.”

“Besides, the US and Canada also made a fool of themselves: The North American Aerospace Defense Command detected another radar anomaly on Saturday night. The fighter jets took off again, and the airspace in Montana was closed, but it turned out to be a false alarm,” the Global Times hooted.

The Global Times accused the Biden administration of shooting at phantoms to “reduce any feeling of hesitation or weakness the outside world would have toward the U.S. in the face of possible threats,” and to “satisfy some people’s appetite for the ‘China threat.’”

After rambling on in a barely-lucid manner about the “exaggerated and bizarre” practices of the United States, which either left the rest of the world terrified or indifferent depending on which paragraph of the editorial one was reading, the Global Times offered a little sermon about the right way to deal with airspace incursions:

There are fair, reasonable, and lawful ways to deal with UFOs that appear in the airspace. There are a number of internationally accepted and coordinated methods by default, and the Convention on International Civil Aviation regulates unidentified civil aircraft. But Washington’s approach now is to attack the so-called UFOs rashly regardless of the consequences, and even show off its force in this way. This is a terrible start. Especially with US public opinion fanning the flames, Washington may become even more obsessed with the misuse of force, and even simplify the authorization of the use of force. This will expose civil aircraft to potential danger, including, of course, those of the US itself.

This is rich coming from state operatives of China, the belligerent tyranny that constantly dispatches military ships and warplanes to menace the airspace of peaceable Taiwan, and pulls all sorts of dangerous stunts to bully other Asians out of territory China illegally claims to control.

For example, the government of the Philippines revealed on Monday that Chinese forces blinded the crew of a transport ship with lasers to prevent them from bringing food to a tiny contingent of soldiers stationed on an island the Filipinos own. This was only the latest example of irresponsible Chinese soldiers jeopardizing foreign ships and aircraft with military-grade lasers.

Bloomberg News on Monday noted that the AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles that were evidently used in all of the balloon/UFO shootdowns to date cost the U.S. government about $439,000 apiece, which isn’t cheap, but also is a comparatively small amount amidst the titanic scale of contemporary government spending.