THE top diplomats from China and the United States met on Saturday in the first high-level contact between their countries since the US shot down a Chinese weather balloon two weeks ago.

Wang Yi, director of China’s Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held the talks in Munich, where they were attending an international security conference.

The meeting occurred after Mr Blinken cancelled a trip to Beijing earlier this month over the balloon incident, which has become a major bone of contention between the two countries.

Before his talks with Mr Blinken, Mr Wang renewed Beijing’s criticism of Washington for shooting down the balloon, arguing that the action did not demonstrate US strength.

Beijing insists the white orb shot down off the Carolina coast on February 4 was just an errant civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research that had been blown off course by winds and had only limited “self-steering” capabilities.

Mr Wang repeated that insistence in a speech at the conference, accusing the US of violating international legal norms by destroying the object with a missile fired from a fighter jet.

“The actions don’t show that the US is big and strong, but describe the exact opposite,” he said.

“What we hope for from the US is a pragmatic and positive approach to China that allows us to work together.”

But Mr Blinken told an interviewer on CBS television’s Face the Nation programme:  “I made very clear to him [Mr Wang] that China sending its surveillance balloon over the United States in violation of our sovereignty, in violation of international law, was unacceptable and must never happen again.”