China’s state-run Global Times on Thursday mocked the United States as a “breeding ground for delusion” because of the furor over drone sightings in New Jersey.
The Chinese Communist propaganda organ was particularly irked by House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Michael McCaul claiming the mysterious aircraft were “Chinese spy drones.”
“Some American politicians seem to have a special preference for sensationalizing the ‘China threat.’ Much like the ‘spy balloon’ incident that unfolded in early 2023, the latest accusations against Chinese drones follow an old script, repackaged with new rhetoric aimed at smearing China,” the Global Times hooted.
The Chinese spy balloon of 2023 was, of course, a real Chinese spy balloon, as numerous studies of its behavior have confirmed. Beijing has developed a penchant for floating suspicious balloons into the air space of adversaries – either to gather information or to test how adversaries respond to the penetration of their air defense zones.
The Global Times nevertheless insisted that shooting down China’s spy balloon in 2023 turned the U.S. into a “laughingstock around the world,” and drone fever in New Jersey was another embarrassment.
“From ‘spy balloons’ to ‘spy cranes’ to ‘spy drones’ … these absurd and paranoid labels reflect the distorted and narrow-minded mentality of some U.S. politicians in their attempts to contain and suppress China,” the Global Times lectured.
The “spy crane” controversy from the spring of 2023 involved U.S. military and national security officials warning that huge computer-operated cranes built and operated by China could be used for intelligence-gathering purposes.
The cranes were built by a subsidiary of a leading Chinese government contractor that has been restricted from access to sensitive U.S. technology since 2020. In at least one documented instance, the FBI found “intelligence-gathering equipment” mixed with a shipment of these cranes.
The regime in Beijing, and its mouthpieces like the Global Times, dismiss all concerns about Chinese espionage as groundless “paranoia” no matter how much evidence stacks up. Every U.S. official who warns about threats from China is dismissed as a mindless hatemonger seeking to gin up “anti-China sentiment” for political gain.
The Global Times revealed the most pertinent reason it was assigned to mock the New Jersey drone story:
The accusations against “Chinese spy drones” coincide with a recent move in the U.S. Senate, where a provision within the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 aims to create mechanisms for further oversight and prohibition of the use of Chinese drones. The bill seeks to add Chinese drone companies to the Federal Communications Commission’s “Covered List,” which would prevent their use in telecommunications industries. Proponents of the bill argued that the U.S. should ban Chinese drones, claiming that these drones pose a threat.
Undoubtedly, some U.S. politicians, by fostering continuous fear of a specific “other,” are pushing political agendas that serve their private interests. The result is that the U.S. ultimately bears the costs. American industrial insiders have told the media that 90 percent of public safety agencies in the U.S. and globally are already using Chinese drones. If the bill goes fully through and prohibits the use of Chinese drones, it would be catastrophic. The drone ban is also opposed by U.S. farm groups, who consider Chinese drones to be better, cheaper, more capable, and more reliable than U.S.-made alternatives, arguing that it would cripple U.S. agriculture.
The Senate voted 83-12 on Tuesday to hold a full vote on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a huge bill whose many provisions do indeed prohibit the use of Chinese drones, call for an investigation of two major Chinese drone manufacturers, and encourage both the U.S. and its allies to become less reliant on China for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).
The NDAA’s language on Chinese drones was adapted from legislation introduced by two Republican senators, Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Rick Scott (R-FL). Stefanik on Tuesday amusingly referred to drones from China’s titanic DJI corporation as “TikTok, but with wings” – a jab at China’s notoriously insecure and surveillance-prone TikTok social media platform.
Many Americans do not realize how dominant Chinese companies have become in the drone market. VOA cited estimates that DJI alone controls almost 90 percent of the U.S. market, in part because it undercuts prices from American manufacturers by 50 percent or more.
DJI representatives have denounced U.S. efforts to restrict or ban their products as “protectionism.” As echoed by the Global Times piece on drone hysteria, the company insists its cheap drones have become indispensable to entire American industries. It also claims its drones do not forward any data to the Chinese government or military.
As for whatever is going on in the skies above the Garden State, there are still many theories but few hard facts. Rep. McCaul did say on Tuesday that at least some of the mystery craft could be “spy drones” from China.
“We need to identify who is behind these drones. My judgment based on my experience is that those that are over our military sites are adversarial and most likely are coming from the People’s Republic of China,” McCaul told reporters.
“I believe they’re spy drones and the PRC, and Communist China is very good at this stuff. We know they bought land around military bases. This would be very consistent with their policy over the past couple years,” he said.
McCaul clarified that he believes there could be several different origins for the unidentified drones. The objects appearing over military installations, such as Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle, are the ones he most suspects of being Chinese spy drones.
“We assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones,” the FBI, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Pentagon, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a joint statement on Monday.
