[pifm_guy]

Remember that Loon, the USA Google balloon project, sent similar balloons around the world, including over China.

They didn't shoot our balloons down.

[tushar-r]

Pretty certain they did not. China controls the Internet a little too seriously and has banned Google for many years to allow them to fly Loon balloons beaming free internet to their population.

[pifm_guy]

They didn't give permission for the internet service to launch there. But they did give overflight permission.

[thebytefairy]

If they gave permission, then that's a very different scenario to this one.