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She was speaking with Today this morning after the US military destroyed a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the Carolina coast after it traversed sensitive military sites across North America.
“I believe the US has managed this as carefully as possible. They brought the balloon down over their own territorial waters.
“They’ve expressed a continued desire to engage, and we would encourage that to be responded to positively by the Chinese government.”
The presence of the balloon in the skies above the US dealt a severe blow to already strained US-Chinese relations that have been in a downward spiral for years.
It prompted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to abruptly cancel a high-stakes Beijing trip aimed at easing tensions.
Wong stressed the incident would not deter the Australian government from trying to rebuild relations with China while working with the US to ease tensions in the Asia Pacific region.
“The more important thing is what happens now.
“We want a stable, peaceful prosperous region and world. That means the great powers, which are in competition, engage, make sure there are guard rails around that competition to ensure that there isn’t escalation.”
China responded to the US action by declaring that it reserved the right to “take further actions” and criticised the US for “an obvious overreaction and a serious violation of international practice.”
A former US national security expert told Today this morning the balloon shot down by the US military was probably part of a wider Chinese surveillance network across the Asia Pacific.
Anthony Shaffer, who served as senior intelligence officer in the US army, said Australia should be concerned about the spy balloons.
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He pointed to remarks by US Senator Marco Rubio who claimed a similar Chinese balloon had been seen over Hawaii, a key Pacific naval base.
“My concern is obviously Hawaii our territories, you’re all in that kind of area, you’re closer to China than we are.
“This is something everybody needs to be concerned about.”
Shaffer said he was also concerned the balloons could become “weaponised”. He pointed to how the Japanese fitted explosive devices to high altitude balloons during World War II and flew them over the north west US.
“This is something we need to be worried about. It is potentially what do they put below that balloon that could be potentially weaponised.”
Former FBI counter-terrorism expert Peter Strzok told Today the balloon was a large sophisticated structure and was probably capable of gathering detailed intelligence.
He said the US military’s next move will be recovering its wreckage for analysis.
“One of the things the military and intelligence community will be looking at is what sort of equipment was being carried.
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“There was some indication it was including the solar panels approximately 90 feet (28m) long. That’s a fairly large platform and fair amount of collection sensors and other equipment might be on there.”
