The access to people in the military would not happen today. This obviously mirrors what was going on in and around the nuke sites in the States and the UK. And now that we have seen this, I have no doubt the Chinese also had similar experiences.
I believe they reported an object near Shandong and tried to shoot it down the same week of the balloon incident and shootdowns of the other unidentified objects. Could have been posturing though, as I don't believe any evidence of that incident materialized.