Sending a spy balloon was a 'clumsy' move by China that 'put a missile' through an already bad situation with the US, foreign policy expert says

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The Chinese spy balloon that floated above America and sparked a diplomatic crisis was a "clumsy" move by Beijing that "put a missile" through an already strained relationship with the United States, a China expert said. 

The 200-foot-tall, high-altitude balloon — which first appeared last week over continental America and was ultimately shot down by a US fighter jet — symbolized "for everyone in the world, particularly in America, that we are in an increasingly hostile relationship," Orville Schell, the director of the Center on US-China Relations at Asia Society in New York told Insider. 

The balloon incident also torpedoed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's high-stakes trip to China. The US indefinitely postponed the visit just hours before he was due to depart and further stripped the two superpower countries of a chance to ease tensions.

Schell explained that the US-China relationship has been on a "downward spiral," and Blinken's visit to Beijing was supposed to try to "slow down" that trend. 

The Chinese balloon was an "incredibly clumsy gesture" on Beijing's part and it "deprived us of a very importan ..

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