The British businessman, Mr Richard Branson, left Chinese air space and a diplomatic tussle behind him yesterday as he continued his attempt to be first to circumnavigate the world in a balloon.
"He has just left" Chinese air space, said a spokesman at Mr Branson's control centre in London 3 p.m. yesterday.
Earlier, Beijing had granted him permission to fly over China after he drifted into restricted air space over Tibet where he was initially ordered to land.
His spokesman, Mr Michael Johnson, said that once over the Pacific, the balloon would "very probably" pick up a 100-to-150 knot jet-stream and accelerate considerably.
Mr Branson and his two co-pilots, Mr Steve Fossett, an American, and Mr Per Lindstrand of Sweden, have gone wildly astray from their planned flight path since being forced to skirt around the US-British bombing raids on Iraq.
China reluctantly granted permission late on Tuesday after a series of last-ditch pleas from British officials, on condition the balloon leave as soon as possible.
Chinese officials, worried about safety considerations, at first insisted the balloon land in the Tibetan capital Lhasa.
But project leaders and British officials said it could not comply because of safety concerns and would have to continue travelling east, further into China.
After a flurry of late-night meetings and pleas from Britain - notably from Tony Blair and Ted Heath - Beijing finally allowed Mr Branson to continue, on condition the hot air and helium balloon follow all instructions and leave China as soon as it could.
Earlier yesterday unpredictable winds across China had raised concerns that the balloon would be carried into North Korean air space, even though it had never been intended to over-fly the country.
"North Korea will be safely avoided," a spokesman at mission control said. "So that is one less problem to confront."
"They're in a good mood because they've been allowed through, but they're a little bit nervous about crossing the Pacific," a spokeswoman added.
The project leader in London , Mr Mike Kendrick, said the request to leave China quickly was one "we are happy to comply with".
"We are so pleased," he said. "If our jobs weren't so important, we'd be getting drunk." Mr Branson and his team had already broken their own record for distance flown in a hot air balloon, covering 4,900 nautical miles so far, against a previous record of 4,142.5 nautical miles.
The balloon took off from Morocco on Friday and the crew hoped to complete their journey and land in western Europe by the New Year.
Mr Branson is racing to take what is seen as the last great aviation record.
Mr Branson said the team hoped to cross the Pacific in a couple of days "and just be coming in over the American border for Christmas Day".
This attempt, which under perfect weather conditions was estimated to take 12 to 15 days, is the latest of almost 20 attempts at the record.
In a similar try last year, Mr Branson's balloon snapped free of its ropes and flew off without him. Mr Fossett was almost killed in August this year on a round-the-world attempt when his balloon was caught in a thunderstorm and plunged thousands of feet into the South Pacific. Round-the-world balloonists need to benefit from the jet stream which traverses Chinese air space towards the Pacific Ocean at over 230 km an hour.