My guess would be it was staged, but by the US government. They have spies in every nation's Government in the entire world, and anyone pretending otherwise is fooling themselves. The Pentagon probably knew about the balloon weeks ago, knew its mission, its capabilities, its route, manufacturer, etc...They probably staged things along the route, either to show the Chinese government false information, or to let the Chinese government know that they(the US) knows about the balloon.
So now we have a situation were the US knows that the Chinese know that the US knows that the Chinese know the US knows. Meaning the Chinese now need to conduct reviews all along the chain of command and manufacturing to find out how the US knew. Its the US's way of fucking with them.
"Hey our spies told us everything, and any pictures you got could be compromised as false intelligence, and we got your spy balloon and you look bad on the international scene."
So now Chinese officials will get even more paranoid and cut-throat to their own.