Biden mentioned China only 3 times in his 2022 address to the US Congress.

All eyes are on China and how President Biden handled a spy balloon from a communist state that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina ahead of his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

Republicans have expressed concern that the administration has ignored or downplayed a growing threat from the Chinese Communist Party after a Chinese observation balloon was allowed to drift over the US mainland for days before it was shot down by the US military.

The president only mentioned China three times during his last speech on March 1, arguing that his bipartisan infrastructure bill “has set us on the path to winning the 21st century economic competition that we face with the rest of the world, especially China.”

“But guys, in order to compete for jobs in the future, we also need to level the playing field with China and other competitors,” he said at the time. “That’s why it’s so important to pass a bipartisan Innovation Act in Congress that will ensure record investment in new technology and American manufacturing. We used to invest almost 2% of our GDP in research and development. Now we don’t do it. t – China.

U.S. President Joe Biden addresses the U.S. Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., USA, Tuesday, March 1, 2022.
(Jim LoScalzo/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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News commentators speculated that the president would not mention the balloon incident at all, which was widely criticized as a blunder, during his Tuesday night speech. However, it remains to be seen if he will take a tougher stance on China and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The Biden administration first announced Thursday that it was tracking the Chinese balloon after it first entered US airspace over the Alaskan Aleutian Islands five days earlier.

Republicans have suggested that the Biden administration refused to let the American public know about the existence of the balloon earlier because they didn’t want it to interfere with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s planned trip to Beijing. Some critics have suggested that the administration would not have mentioned it at all if the balloon had not been spotted by civilians flying over Billings, Montana.

Blinken’s trip was canceled anyway, and Biden was beaten by Republicans for failing to shoot down the balloon earlier.

President Joe Biden delivers his first address to Congress at a joint session of Congress at the Capitol on Tuesday, March 1, 2022, in Washington.
(Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool via AP)

Photographs of a downed Chinese spy balloon taken in Ainora, South Carolina.
(Fox News)

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The White House said Biden followed the advice of the Pentagon and senior military officials not to shoot down the aircraft over US territory, as this could lead to civilian casualties and other collateral damage.

On Sunday, US officials said another Chinese spy balloon crashed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii four months ago, and at least one Chinese spy balloon flew over parts of Texas and Florida during the Trump administration, despite to the former president’s insistent claims that it never happened.

US President Joe Biden shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping as they meet on the sidelines of the G20 leaders’ summit in Bali, Indonesia, November 14, 2022.
(REUTERS/Kevin Lamarck)

Former President Trump and a number of his senior national security and defense officials have spoken out against Administrator Biden’s claims that Chinese spy balloons briefly flew over the continental United States during the Trump administration in statements to Fox News Digital.

Trump’s former White House national security adviser John Bolton told Fox News Digital he had never heard of anything like it during his tenure.

“I am not aware of any ballooning of any authority over the United States during my tenure and I never heard of it before joining us in 2018,” Bolton said. “I didn’t hear anything about what happened after I left either.”

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Robert O’Brien, who served as the White House’s national security adviser from 2019 to 2021, told Fox News Digital he was not aware of anything like that.

“Definitely, I was never briefed on the matter,” O’Brien said, telling Fox News Digital that his team, which included Matt Pottinger, who served as deputy national security adviser, and Allison Hooker, who served as senior adviser across Asia. , were also not informed about these events.

Brooke Singman of Fox News provided the coverage.