China made this accusation after multiple Chinese craft were shot down in the west.

Over the past week, several balloons and aircraft allegedly of Chinese ownership have been shot down in airspace over the United States and Canada. These interactions have led to friction between the countries over concerns of airspace intrusion and potential spying.

Today, in a response to the balloons being shot down, China publicly accused the United States of sending at least ten balloon craft into their own airspace since January of last year. The Chinese Foreign Ministry made these claims, though neither pictures nor evidence supporting them were provided. Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said it is “common for US balloons to illegally enter other countries’ airspace.”

“Since last year alone, American high-altitude balloons have illegally crossed China’s airspace more than 10 times without the approval of relevant Chinese authorities,” Wang said.

The White House immediately denied the claim, saying that it was merely an attempt on China’s part to downplay the aircraft that entered US airspace. “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,” a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Adrienne Watson, wrote 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 added.