Biden will 'portray China as a bad actor' in Tuesday's speech, experts say, as it offers a 'big chance' to lay out his foreign policy after the balloon downing.
on Tuesday after a suspected Chinese spy balloon was shot down after passing over the U.S., experts say.
While the president is unlikely to tackle head-on Republican criticism that the balloon was not taken out sooner, Biden will"portray China as a bad actor" amid appeals for bipartisanship, according to Alex Waddan, an associate professor in politics at the University of Leicester in the U.K.American F-22 shot down the balloon off the coast of South Carolina
. It was first spotted over the Aleutian Islands, an archipelago off the coast of Alaska, on January 28, before travelling across Alaska, Canada and then into northern U.S. states on Tuesday. Defense officials believe the balloon was intended to surveil sensitive military sites in the U.S. China has claimed that it was a weather balloon that had been blown off course, and expressed outrage that it had been destroyed.
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the U.S. Capitol House Chamber on March 1, 2022 in Washington, D.C. and, inset, a suspected Chinese spy balloon is hit by an F-22 fighter jet off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on February 4, 2023 and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs building in Beijing on December 1, 2022.