TAIPEI, Taiwan — China claimed Monday that the United States flew spy balloons into Chinese airspace greater than 10 instances since January 2022 with out Beijing’s permission, accusations that additional ratcheted up tensions between the 2 international locations amid mutual allegations of surveillance.

U.S.-China relations are already on edge after the U.S. shot down a big, high-altitude balloon on Feb. 4 that it says was set aloft by China and which a State Department official says was a part of a “fleet” of Chinese army balloons designed to conduct surveillance. China mentioned the balloon was a civilian airship that drifted astray accidentally.

China is now countering U.S. claims extra vociferously with accusations of its personal. At a daily press briefing on Monday in Beijing, Wang Wenbin, a Chinese overseas ministry spokesperson, claimed that it’s “common for U.S. balloons to illegally enter other countries’ airspace.”

The Chinese spokesperson additionally mentioned the U.S. was utilizing warships and planes to assemble intelligence on China 657 instances for the reason that begin of final 12 months. All this was proof, Wang claimed, that the U.S. is “without a doubt the world’s largest surveillance habitual offender and surveillance empire.”

Wang warned the U.S. ought to “first reflect on itself and change course, rather than smear and instigate a confrontation.”

John Kirby, spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council, mentioned in a MSNBC interview on Monday that this declare was not true.

“Any claim that the US government operates surveillance balloons over the PRC is false. It is China that has a high-altitude surveillance balloon program for intelligence collection, that it has used to violate the sovereignty of the US and over 40 countries across 5 continents,” wrote Adrienne Watson, one other NSC spokesperson, on Twitter.

“This is the latest example of China scrambling to do damage control. It has repeatedly and wrongly claimed the surveillance balloon it sent over the US was a weather balloon and has failed to offer any credible explanations for its intrusion into our airspace, airspace of others,” Watson continued.

Balloons much like the one discovered above Montana final week have been noticed in recent times above Japan, India and Taiwan. China admitted a high-altitude balloon discovered above Latin America this month was its personal, although it mentioned the balloon was a civilian airship doing climate analysis.

Since Friday, U.S. forces have brought down three unidentified objects flying above the U.S. and Canada. American officers haven’t disclosed what sorts of objects they had been or who despatched them.

Aowen Cao contributed analysis from Beijing.