...on various China forums that I visit. There is still some confusion over why the US is suddenly shooting down weather balloons and which one was Chinese — but they do understand that China will be blamed for all "balloons gone bad."

I'm still trying to figure out what a "Spy Balloon" is. It sounds awfully Jules Verne to me. It's certainly not a very stealth technology, is it? It makes about as much sense as a Spy Blimp. Although Blimps, like drones, have motors that can steer and navigate; balloons not so much.

Why China would launch "spy balloons" over the United States is an even greater mystery. Especially since China just launched a brand new space station with some of the most sophisticated survellience cameras that the world has ever known, thanks to their quantum technology. China's space station was completed and fully staffed with astronauts just a few months ago. Seems to me those alleged Chinese "Spy Balloons" would just get in the way of a good view from above.

In any event, I collected comments on this issue from a few China forums, both for entertainment and understanding. There is a range of interesting reactions and a bit of confusion:

Moon Cake

Please explain.

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Skywindow

This guy , using wind data, tracked the path of an object shot down by US on Friday back to a US weather service balloon launch site in Alaska. Where the redline crosses western Alaska coast line.
So he looked up NWS public balloon data. And it turned out that 1 balloon’s data from that NWS site on Friday was missing.
Obviously he thinks that’s the balloon shot down by US military.

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Other forum participants hit the ground running:

Short-Promo

Of course, China will be blamed for spooking the Americans and causing Biden to be skittish.

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Other_Brother

US will make up anything to go to war. I still remember their lies before Iraq war. How that lying war criminal waved a fake vial of anthrax and all the white liberals bought the lies and were blood thirsty for blood of brown people. Now they're doing the same to China.

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uqtl044

Except China has already annihilated america economically, so america can't do anything else (in fact, the desperation of the american regime is a tacit admission that it already knows it has been categorically defeated). The last resort measure was [Trump's] "trade war" which america lost in catastrophic fashion (america suffers permanent inflation, shortages, deficits, recession, etc.) rapidly accelerating the terminal collapse of america, while China achieves literally the largest trade surpluses in human history.

Even Russia, alone, is humiliating all of nato combined and there is not a single thing that nato can do about it, hence why they are moving away from propaganda on ukraine to deranged hysteria about a balloon. They know they have already lost catastrophically, with nato disarmed in the process.

Things are gonna continue to get much, much worse in nato societies as rapidly rising levels of brutal misery consume them. This year is already devastating for nato economies, so expect civil unrest and wars in nato societies to escalate.

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Other_Brother

I hear the Western militaries believe they need a war with China now before it's too late. But I don't see how the West can defatet China now. It might be too late but the Western elite are going to for a war regardless.

Western economies are built on tearing down developing world and stealing resources. They have no resources and they are mad they can no longer just land in a country and commit genocide and steal all the resources.

I'm still laughing at the fact that NATO has failed to defeat Russia. Its just one country defeating USA and its European clients. The whole balloon drama is definitely a smoke screen. BTW most of their population buys it. It takes 2 minutes of propoganda to get them hyped up for war and calling for genocide against people who don't look like them or think like them.

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dfas32

(( I hear the Western militaries believe they need a war with China now before it's too late. But I don't see how the West can defatet China now. It might be too late but the Western elite are going to for a war regardless. ))

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The US spelled out the plan in Rand Corp paper on China which thinks they can launch a limited war (deadline 2025) that can be contained within Asia where they dream about destroying Chinas economy whilst US mainland as usual is safe and far away. Part of the plan is the ability to blockade China and prevent access by sea which is why they have been trying so hard to sabotage the BnR.

Sounds far out? Well they also wrote a paper for Russia where they basically layed out the Ukraine scenario we now see playing out today backfiring on the collective west.

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bigburner

the pentagon is so funny

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bengyap

Damn. Those F-22s are raking up the kills.

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NoChinaHate

I went to the party shop on Friday to get ONE balloon inflated for my kids to play with. They told me that the wait for inflated balloons is 3 hours. Suddenly, everyone had to have one.

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CloudLantern

The US shot down their own balloon which is now no longer gathering weather data.
Friendly fire. Sorry bout that.

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Meanwhile, Chinese from Canada weigh in:

shanghaipotpie

BalloonGate may be the next reason for increased military spending. The Americans have shot down another Chinese Balloon over the Yukon [probably just a Canada Goose) to embarass Canadians into spending more money on F-35 fighter jets. In an interview on CBC Radio today, a spokesman from MLI, a right wing think tank, is advocating buying more F-35's and building military bases in the arctic to defend Canada from the new "Chinese aggression." This think tank has affiliations with Taiwan for spreading anti-China news:

Did a Chinese balloon just prove it’s time for Canada, U.S. to modernize NORAD?

As a perhaps unintended consequence, said Miller, the balloon’s incursion could spur both NORAD countries to improve their defences. “It’s actually going to mobilize Canada and the U.S. in particular to modernize NORAD, which is something that they’re already thinking about,” said Miller. University of Manitoba associate professor Andrea Charron, one of Canada’s foremost experts on NORAD, agrees. She said the balloon underscores the urgent need to bring the aging North American early warning system up to date. Military commanders have long warned that the system, including a series of 1980s-era radar stations in Canada’s Far North, has passed its best-before date. Plans to replace it have been announced.

— Toronto Star

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uqtl044

You are missing the story here. These are not democracies, they don't need to convince anyone. They are just experiencing terminal collapse so they seek distractions as their own people suffer untold levels of misery with no answers whatsoever from the incompetent settler regimes. That's all there is to it.

It's also important to understand that the terminal economic collapse of nato guarantees also the terminal collapse of nato militarily speaking. This has been blatantly exposed across the board in the last years, including the humiliating defeat of nato in Afghanistan and the humiliation that nato's nazi regime has suffered and continues suffering, with all of nato literally running out of weapons in the process, with nato economies suffering devastating deficits and deindustrialization, and also nato losing the best land in europe. Don't let propaganda and domestic nonsense distract you (nobody outside these hellholes ever believed that people stuck there ever needed "convincing" for anything), pay attention to material reality and data.

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— @Pluto's Republic

It appears that as many as four weather balloons have been shot out of the sky by US fighter jets in recent days. One reportedly in Alaska, another over Canada, plus one off the coast of South Carolina. A fourth flying object was shot down on Sunday over Lake Huron. The four "balloon-destroying" sidewinder missiles cost US taxpayers $500,000 dollars each.

The first balloon was described as a Chinese "reconnaissance vessel" -- an assessment China has ridiculed, while readily claiming the balloon and referring to it as a civilian atmospheric research balloon traveling toward the Arctic, that was pulled off-course by high winds over the Bering Strait and into Alaska and North America. The origins and purpose of the other "objects" have not been described or confirmed by the U.S. military, who have yet to even acknowledge that they are balloons. US politicians, however, refer to all of them as Chinese Spy Balloons, and cry out for additional funding for expanded military radar.

Another weather balloon, launched from Alaska, has reportedly disappeared altogether. All the news stories in US media are sketchy and garbled in general. Some scientists suggest that the lack of facts from the US government about the "spy balloon" narrative may simply be embarrassment. Military officials know what a weather balloon looks like. Thousands are released into the upper atmosphere every single day, around the world. Scores of them are pulled off course by upper atmosphere winds. Separately, State Department official said that the Biden administration was looking into "taking action" against China for the surveillance balloons sent over U.S. territory.

Online forums frequented by the Chinese have been talking about the US weather balloon attacks and the missing balloon story, below, that was posted on Twitter over the weekend, where a few brave North American meteorologists are speculating about it. On the old Twitter, they would have all been banned by now.

I back forecasted the latest "Balloon" shoot down in AK. Based on the location and time, it tracks back to near the Kotzebue NWS Rawinsonde site. Did we shoot down an NWS Weather balloon?? There is no data for the 12Z launch from that site and all the rest worked. #Chinaballoon pic.twitter.com/20N0bAwugd

— Dan Satterfield (@wildweatherdan) February 10, 2023

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