U.S. confirms China has had a spy base in Cuba since no less than 2019

WASHINGTON — China has been working a spy base in Cuba since no less than 2019, a part of a worldwide effort by Beijing to improve its intelligence-gathering capabilities, in response to a Biden administration official.

The official, who was not approved to remark publicly and spoke on the situation of anonymity, mentioned the U.S. intelligence neighborhood has been conscious of China’s spying from Cuba and a bigger effort to arrange intelligence-gathering operations across the globe for a while.

The Biden administration has stepped up efforts to thwart the Chinese push to broaden its spying operations and believes it has made some progress via diplomacy and different unspecified motion, in response to the official, who was aware of U.S. intelligence on the matter.

The existence of the Chinese spy base was confirmed after The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that China and Cuba had reached an settlement in precept to construct an digital eavesdropping station on the island. The Journal reported China deliberate to pay cash-strapped Cuba billions of {dollars} as a part of the negotiations.

The White House known as the report inaccurate.

“I’ve seen that press report, it’s not accurate,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby mentioned in an MSNBC interview Thursday. “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.”

The U.S. intelligence neighborhood had decided Chinese spying from Cuba has been an “ongoing” matter and is “not a new development,” the administration official mentioned.

Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío additionally refuted the report in a Twitter submit Saturday.

“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,” he wrote.

President Joe Biden’s nationwide safety workforce was briefed by the intelligence neighborhood quickly after he took workplace in January 2021 about a lot of delicate Chinese efforts across the globe the place Beijing was weighing increasing logistics, basing and assortment infrastructure as a part of the People’s Liberation Army’s try and additional its affect, the official mentioned.

Chinese officers checked out websites spanning the Atlantic Ocean, Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and the Indo-Pacific. The effort included taking a look at current assortment amenities in Cuba, and China carried out an improve of its spying operation on the island in 2019, the official mentioned.

Tensions between the U.S. and China have been fraught all through Biden’s time period.

The relationship might have hit a nadir final yr after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s go to to democratically ruled Taiwan. That go to, the primary by a sitting House speaker since Newt Gingrich in 1997, led China, which claims the island as its territory, to launch navy workouts round Taiwan.

U.S.-China relations turned additional strained early this yr after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon that had crossed the United States.

Beijing additionally was angered by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s stopover within the U.S. final month which included an encounter with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The speaker hosted the Taiwanese chief on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in southern California.

Still, the White House has been desperate to resume high-level communications between the 2 sides.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is planning to journey to China subsequent week, a visit that was canceled because the balloon was flying over the U.S. Blinken expects to be in Beijing on June 18 for conferences with senior Chinese officers, in response to U.S. officers, who spoke Friday on situation of anonymity as a result of neither the State Department nor the Chinese international ministry has but confirmed the journey.

CIA Director William Burns met in Beijing along with his counterpart final month. White House nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan met along with his Chinese counterpart in Vienna over two days in May and made clear that the administration wished to enhance high-level communications with the Chinese facet.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin just lately spoke briefly with Li Shangfu, China’s minister of nationwide protection, on the opening dinner of a safety discussion board in Singapore. China had earlier rejected Austin’s request for a gathering on the sidelines of the discussion board.

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