Aerial view of the old city of Havana, Cuba on August 4, 2017
Frederic Soltan | Corbis News | beautiful pictures
China has been spying on Cuba for some time and upgraded intelligence-gathering facilities there in 2019, a Biden administration official said on Saturday, following a report of an espionage effort. is currently underway on this island.
The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported that China had reached a secret agreement with Cuba set up an electronic wiretapping facility on an island about 100 miles (160 km) from Florida, but the U.S. and Cuban governments strongly cast doubt on the report.
The Biden administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the media’s characterization was “inconsistent with our knowledge,” but did not specify how false the report was, nor mention details whether China is attempting to build a new wiretapping facility. Cuba.
Officials said the problem in advance Joe Bidenhis presidency, as well as Beijing’s efforts to bolster its worldwide intelligence-gathering infrastructure.
“This is an ongoing issue, and not a new development,” the official said. “The PRC (People’s Republic of China) carried out an upgrade of its intelligence-gathering facilities in Cuba in 2019. This is well documented in the intelligence file.”
When asked for comment, an official at the Chinese Embassy in Washington pointed to Friday’s statement by a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman accusing the US of “spreading rumors and slander” by saying about a Cuban spy station and “the most powerful hacker empire in the United States”. world.”
The Cuban government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Thursday, Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio dismissed the Journal’s report as “totally a lie” and called it a fabrication by the United States to justify a decades-long economic embargo. Washington’s decade for the island.
He said Cuba denies any foreign military presence in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The spotlight surrounding China’s spying from Cuba comes as Washington and Beijing are taking exploratory steps to defuse tensions that have risen after a suspected high-altitude Chinese spy balloon. passed through the United States before the U.S. military shot it down off the East Coast in February.
That includes a trip to China that US officials said Secretary of State Antony Blinken was planning on June 18. Washington’s top diplomat had previously canceled the visit because of a contempt incident. spy balloon.
The Biden administration official said that while the former Donald Trump administration was aware of China’s attempts to base China in Cuba and made some efforts to address the challenge, “we didn’t get enough of it.” progressive and needs a more direct approach.”
The official said US diplomats have engaged with governments considering Chinese bases and have exchanged information with them.
“Our experts assess that our diplomatic efforts have slowed the PRC,” the official said. “We think the People’s Republic of China is not quite what they had hoped for.”
