China makes serious demarches to US over forceful downing of civilian airship

Vice-Foreign Minister Xie Feng has made serious demarches to the US embassy in China over the US' use of force to bring down an unmanned Chinese civilian airship on Sunday.

Xie expressed China's resolute opposition and strong protest toward the incident on behalf of the Chinese government.

According to a statement issued by the ministry on Monday, Xie said that the unintended entry of a Chinese unmanned airship into US airspace was an accidental event due to force majeure. The ins and outs of what happened are crystal clear and clearly allow for no distortion or smearing, he said.

However, Xie said that the US side has turned a deaf ear to all of these and overreacted by insisting on the abuse of force toward the civilian airship that was on route to exit US airspace. This has seriously violated the spirit of international law and international common practice, he said.

The vice-foreign minister emphasized that the actions taken by the US side severely impacted and undermined the efforts and process both sides have been engaged in toward stabilizing the China-US relationship since the two countries' leaders met in Bali, Indonesia.

China urged the US to not take further actions that will undermine China's interests or upgrade and expand tensions between the countries, Xie said.

He said that the Chinese government is closely following this latest development and will firmly safeguard the legitimate rights of Chinese companies and the interests and dignity of the Chinese side.

China reserves the right to further react over this matter if necessary, Xie added.