Cuba Does Not Host a Chinese Espionage Center, FM Stresses

On Monday, Cuba described the claims of the U.S. government regarding the presence of a Chinese espionage center on the island as a new disinformation operation.

"The statements made by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the presence of a Chinese spy base in Cuba are false... Our position on this matter is clear and categorical... Blinken's statements 'lack evidence'," Foreign Affairs Minister Bruno Rodriguez said.

"Cuba is not a threat to the United States or any other country. The United States pursues a policy that daily threatens and punishes the Cuban population as a whole," he reiterated.

The U.S. accusations are intended to "serve as a pretext to maintain the economic blockade against Cuba and the maximum pressure measures that have reinforced it in recent years."

On Monday, Secretary of State Blinken stated that the Joe Biden administration has "a strategy" to counter Chinese espionage in Cuba and other countries, which is yielding results.

On Saturday, the U.S. government declassified information from its intelligence services claiming that China has had "intelligence collection facilities" since 2019 or even earlier.

Such a term can, however, encompass anything from centers with dozens of spies to a simple listening post equipped with an antenna.

According to these reports, when President Joe Biden took office in 2021, he received information that China was attempting to expand its intelligence services worldwide by establishing espionage centers in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

Those statements come days after The Wall Street Journal published that China and Cuba had agreed to build a large espionage center on the island, information that the Cuban government categorically denied and that the White House initially described as "inaccurate."

Cuban Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Carlos Fernandez de Cossio stated that such a publication consisted of "unfounded information," "slanders," and "falsehoods" aimed at justifying U.S. sanctions against Cuba and destabilizing the island.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government accused the United States of "spreading rumors and calumnies."