After days of silence, this Monday, China has ruled on the controversial information of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on the existence of an agreement between Beijing and Havana to install a base on the island with the capacity to electronically spy on the US. Wang Wenbin, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has completely denied the information and has pointed out the lack of a single criterion.
“Regarding China’s alleged espionage activities in Cuba, this is false information,” the spokesman said. “During the last few days, we have seen the government and the media publish a large amount of inconsistent information about this alleged accusation. This is one more example of the contradictions in the US,” he added.
In addition, Wang has wanted to highlight the ties between the two countries, regardless of what Washington does. “[EE UU] it has no chance of driving a wedge between China and Cuba. We are sincere friends,” she summed up.
The case broke out last Thursday, when the wsj released as exclusive the news that the Cuban regime would have accepted a million-dollar amount for allowing China to install a plant with the capacity to monitor the electronic communications of the entire southern United States, a situation that the newspaper’s intelligence sources considered “very worrying,” in particularly because of the number of military bases in the area.
The Joe Biden Administration explained to the newspaper that the information was not “exact”, words that the Island’s regime took advantage of to brandish its alleged falsehood.
The Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, assured that it was “unfounded information”, “slander” and “fallacies” to justify the sanctions and destabilize the Island. The official took advantage of the moment to emphasize that, on the Island itself, the United States maintains a military base without anyone having scandalized and said that Cuba rejects “all foreign military presence” in the region, especially the one in Guantanamo.
This Saturday, the United States Government once again ruled on the matter and assured that there has already been a spy center in Cuba in Beijing since at least 2019. According to intelligence reports, when Joe Biden arrived at the White House, in January In 2021, he received information that China was trying to expand its intelligence services around the world with the creation of spy centers in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
Those efforts by China included “intelligence collection facilities” in Cuba, a term that can include everything from centers with dozens of spies to a simple listening post equipped with an antenna.
That same day, the New York Times (NYT) confirmed the information of the wsj and citing three intelligence sources, he insisted on the idea that the country is trying to “expand the technological capacity” that it already has installed in Cuba.
Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who lead the Senate Intelligence Committee, issued a joint statement last week outlining their concern. “We are deeply disturbed by reports that Havana and Beijing are working together to attack the United States and our people. The United States must respond to China’s continued brazen attacks on our country’s security,” the text read.
The information of the NYT added that, “for some time now, Cuba’s closeness to the United States has made it a desirable strategic foothold for US adversaries, such as during the Cuban Missile Crisis,” so it is not surprising that the ties are growing, in a context in which the Island is counting on Washington not going to change its policy, even with the Democratic government, as expected.
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