"On February 5, China’s Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Feng made a serious remonstrance to a person in charge of the US Embassy over the US side using weapons to strike a Chinese civilian airship," according to a statement published on the diplomatic agency’s website.
It stresses that the Chinese authorities "are carefully monitoring the unfolding situation and will resolutely defend the legal rights and interests of national companies." "By such actions, the United States delivered a serious blow to the efforts directed at stabilizing Chinese-US relations following the Bali meeting [of the leaders of the two countries last year]," the statement specified.
According to the statement, Beijing "reserves the right to take all the necessary countermeasures."
On Saturday, over the Atlantic Ocean off the Carolina coast, the US military downed the Chinese air balloon which had flown into US airspace earlier.
MNA/PR