What is truely interesting to me is that apparently the Chinese have flown balloons over the US before but the US intelligence agencies (an oxymoron if ever there was one!) never told the public about them. This time a private person in Montana spotted this one and reported it on Twitter and that started the sht storm. I have to think that if they were a threat then the US Gov would have said something publicly before now and they would have done something to shot them down over the Pacific and before they reached the US. It seems like this time, the US Gov is only reacting because the dolts in the news media are all crying that the sky is falling!
OTOH if the Chinese optics aren't very good or if they wanted a much better view of something, then flying a balloon at 60,000 feet would be better than flying a satellite at 100+ miles (528,000+ ft) and probably a lot cheaper to boot.