China has been operating a spy base in Cuba since at least 2019, reported the Associated Press citing a Biden administration official. It added that the base is part of a global effort by Beijing to upgrade its intelligence-gathering capabilities across the globe. The official confirmed to AP that the US intelligence community has been aware of China’s spying from Cuba. AP stated the official as confirming that the Biden administration has intensified efforts to thwart Beijing’s agenda and has made some progress through diplomacy and other unspecified action.
Notably, the existence of the Chinese spy base was confirmed by a The Wall Street Journal report on Thursday. It said that China and Cuba had reached an agreement in principle to build an electronic eavesdropping station on the island, reported AP. The Journal further claimed, as AP stated, that China planned to pay cash-strapped Cuba billions of dollars as part of the negotiations.
However, the White House called the report inaccurate. In an MSNBC interview, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, “I’ve seen that press report, it’s not accurate…What I can tell you is that we have been concerned since day one of this administration about China’s influence activities around the world; certainly in this hemisphere and in this region, we’re watching this very, very closely.”
Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío also refuted the report. He took to Twitter and said, “The slanderous speculation continues, evidently promoted by certain media to cause harm and alarm without observing minimum patterns of communication and without providing data or evidence to support what they disseminate”.
Meanwhile, the administration official said that US intelligence had determined Chinese spying from Cuba has been an “ongoing” matter and is “not a new development”.
China and US have been witnessing deteriorating relationships after the US shot Chinese balloons from its skies earlier this year and said them to be ‘spying’ objects. The two nations also have been at loggerheads on the issue of China’s claim over Taiwan which also escalated after then-US Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last year.
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