canadians found chinese buoys in the arctic believed to be a warning system for the u.s. submarines in the arctic. china has many of these surveillance balloons in its arsenal, if they were. what happens if china sends another one over u.s. and canadian territory? well, we ll work with norad. we will make sure we will also take a strong stance as we just did two weeks ago. our approach when it comes to china is clear. what we did last november is i have an indo-pacific strategy and we said there when it comes to china we think that it is more and more global disruptive power, and also when it comes to china we will challenge china and we will cooperate with china when we need to. obviously, when it comes to issues over our arctic and with our maritime borders or any form
apology. but what i can also tell you is this was an opportunity to speak very clearly and very directly about the fact that china sent a surveillance balloon over our territory, violating our sovereignty and violating international law and i told him that that was unacceptable and can never happen again. we are not the only one on the receiving end of the surveillance balloons. more than 40 countries have had these balloons fly over them in cent years, and that s been exposed to the world. i also had an opportunity because we re here in munich, as you know, focused primarily on russia s ongoing aggression against ukraine, to share our very real concerns about china s support for russia in that war, and what we ve seen over the past years is, of course, some political and rhetorical support and even some non-lethal support, but we are very concerned that china is considering providing lethal support against russia and
weapons to enable russia and ukraine to kill one another could be better utilised to promote development. it s opinions like that that s concentrating minds here, with western policymakers realising that even after almost a year of war, they have still yet to convince some countries that it s right to arm and defend ukraine. so this war is being fought on the snowy plains of eastern ukraine, but there s a diplomatic battle too, and the west is realising it has work to do. james landale there. as tensions simmer over chinese surveillance balloons in the us, the top diplomats of both countries met met on the sidelines of the conference in munich. i asked james for more details. well, you know, they are two
they have still yet to convince some countries that it s right to arm and defend ukraine. so this war is being fought on the snowy plains of eastern ukraine, but there is a diplomatic battle, too, and the west is realising it has work to do. james landale, bbc news, munich. james landale there. well, as tensions simmer over chinese surveillance balloons in the us, the top diplomats of both countries met on the sidelines of the conference in munich. james has more details. well, you know, they are two of the most senior diplomats, if you like, for both china and the united states, so i think it was important for both of them to have this meeting, just to try and calm some of the tensions that have been surrounding this incident in recent days. you know, the chinese foreign minister mr wang was pretty inflammatory about it when he arrived here, saying that america had behaved in a way that was absurd, shooting down these balloons.
there s all kinds of different intelligence components that are going to spotting these, things but, yes they need to go up and check to see if there are this is untenable. obviously the pentagon can t scramble f-22s at retime a science project or a commercial weather balloon passes on the radar. i think right now, three guys are trying to figure out how they discern chinese surveillance balloons, which we re all familiar with from science projects like this. because no, they can t afford to be sending jets after small balloons floating in the air. i was surprised the u.s. government can t tell the difference between what could be a foreign government spy balloon and a middle school weather project. did that surprise you, it s certainly the government isn t admitting that this is a middle school science project. as yet the distinction couldn t be made given the technology that we have seems surprising to me. yeah, it did actually. it s funny because i ve been running for a numb