Global Courant
Aerial view of the old town of Havana, Cuba on August 04, 2017
Frederick Soltan | Corbis News | Getty Images
China has been spying from Cuba for some time and upgraded its intelligence-gathering facilities there in 2019, a Biden administration official said Saturday, following a report on a new espionage effort on the island.
The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported that China had reached a secret deal with Cuba to set up an electronic eavesdropping facility on the island, about 100 miles from Florida, but the US and Cuban governments have serious doubts about the report.
The Biden administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the media’s characterization “does not match our understanding” but did not specify how the report was wrong, nor did he go into detail about whether China attempted to build a new eavesdropping facility in Cuba.
The official said the issue predated Joe Biden’s presidency, as well as Beijing’s efforts to bolster its intelligence-gathering infrastructure globally.
“This is an ongoing problem and not a new development,” the official said. “The PRC (People’s Republic of China) upgraded 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” with rumors of a spy station in Cuba, and “it most powerful hacker empire in the world”. the world.”
The Cuban government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cuban deputy foreign minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio on Thursday dismissed the Journal’s report as “totally lying” and called it a U.S. fabrication designed to overturn Washington’s decades-old economic embargo against the island. to justify.
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He said Cuba rejects any foreign military presence in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The attention to alleged Chinese espionage from Cuba comes as Washington and Beijing take tentative steps to calm tensions that rose after a suspected high-altitude Chinese spy balloon crossed the United States before the US military shot it down off the East Coast in February.
That includes a trip to China that U.S. officials say Secretary of State Antony Blinken is planning for June 18. Washington’s top diplomat had previously canceled the visit because of the spy balloon incident.
The Biden administration official said that despite the former Donald Trump administration knowing about the efforts of the Chinese in Cuba and making some efforts to address the challenge, “we were not making enough progress and taking a more direct approach needed”.
The official said US diplomats had engaged governments considering hosting Chinese bases and exchanged information with them.
“Our experts believe that our diplomatic efforts have slowed the PRC,” the official said. “We think the People’s Republic of China is not quite where they hoped.”
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