The English-language news outlet for the Chinese Communist Party asserts that the media’s hype surrounding China's purported deal with Cuba to establish an electronic eavesdropping facility on the island roughly one hundred miles away from Florida is completely unfounded and hinders the progress of Chinese-American relations.
“China on Friday criticized the U.S.' long-term interference in Cuba's internal affairs and urged it to stop undermining the political foundation of bilateral relations while claiming to build ‘guardrails’ on China-U.S. relations after the U.S. media's hype of China's so-called deal of building a spy station in Cuba.
The U.S. media's latest sensational reports of ‘China's eavesdropping facility’ in Cuba, which reminds people of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 - one of the fiercest scenes of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union - could be a new farce staged by the media and some U.S. politicians as ‘good cop, bad cop’ with the purpose of gaining the ‘upper hand’ and pressuring China in any possible dialogue, analysts said, referring to a simultaneous U.S. revelation of top diplomat Antony Blinken's possible visit to China.
On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal claimed that China has reached a secret deal with Cuba to establish an electronic eavesdropping facility on the island roughly 160 kilometers from Florida. More Western and U.S. media followed Wall Street Journal in reporting the ‘news’. CNN also claimed that Cuba has agreed to allow China to build a spying facility on the island, citing two sources familiar with the intelligence.
However, Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, a U.S. Defense Department spokesperson, denied the report and said, ‘We are not aware of China and Cuba developing a new type of spy station’. John Kirby, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, said the report is not ‘accurate’ while also noting the U.S.' ‘real concerns’ about China's relations with Cuba, Reuters reported.
Cuban Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio also refuted the Wall Street Journal report as ‘totally mendacious and unfounded’ and said it is a U.S. fabrication meant to justify Washington's decades-old economic embargo against the island.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin noted that the U.S. has long illegally occupied Cuba's Guantánamo Bay for secretive activities and imposed a blockade on Cuba for over sixty years. The U.S. needs to take a hard look at itself, stop interfering in Cuba's internal affairs under the pretext of freedom, democracy and human rights, immediately lift its economic, commercial and financial blockade on Cuba, and act in ways conducive to improving relations with Cuba and regional peace and stability, not otherwise.
While hyping the spy installation in Cuba, in recent days, U.S. media also reported on U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's plan to visit China ‘as soon as next week’ following his trip to the Middle East. However, neither China nor the U.S. has officially released any information on his visit to China in the coming weeks.
The timing and practice for the U.S. media and some politicians in hyping the so-called Chinese ‘spy station’ in Cuba mirrors the incident in which a Chinese civilian airship deviated off course in February, showing that some forces in the U.S. are scheming to hijack any possible dialogue between China and the U.S., attempting to force the dialogue to focus on the agenda they set and using it as an opportunity to put extreme pressure on China, Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Friday.
Given Wall Street Journal's influence on the business and trade circle, its report on the so-called spy station in Cuba may have a more malicious purpose - to imply that the increasing geopolitical competition between China and the U.S. has made China an unsafe place for investment, denting the outside world's confidence in China, said Li.
Recently, the U.S. has beefed up efforts to shift blame to China on its refusal to hold dialogue. For example, the U.S. side repeatedly claimed China refused a meeting between State Councilor and Defense Minister Li Shangfu and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue.
Speaking about China's attitude to dialogue with the U.S., Wang Wenbin said on Friday that China's position on this issue is consistent and the door to dialogue and communication is always open. However, the important thing is that communication should not be carried out for the sake of communication, still less saying one thing but doing the opposite.
The U.S. needs to stop interfering in China's internal affairs and stop harming China's interests. It needs to stop eroding the political foundation of bilateral ties while claiming that it wants to put ‘guardrails’ on the relationship. It needs to work together with China to bring bilateral relations back to the right track of sound and steady development, said Wang Wenbin.
Even if the information on Blinken's visit to China is confirmed, some analysts reached by the Global Times said they are still not optimistic that concrete progress will be made to erase the tense bilateral relations during the visit, since the U.S. has not stopped its destructive actions in many fields, including on the South China Sea and the Taiwan question.
On Thursday, the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations approved a bipartisan proposal that would require reports from U.S. government agencies to prepare for and counter what it called a Chinese mainland ‘invasion’ of the island of Taiwan.
China-U.S. relations are facing a tempestuous environment, as being anti-China has become the politically correct stance in Washington, and there is no sign of an imminent improvement in the short term, given the U.S.' current domestic politics, said Wang.
Analysts also warned of increasing risks of deteriorating China-U.S. relations and urged the U.S. to give up its obsession with competing with China and take sincere actions to improve relations”. -Global Times
Whether Havana actually has permitted Beijing to construct an electronic eavesdropping facility on the Caribbean island or if it’s simply a manifestation of growing U.S. insecurity, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that China and Russia would eventually go after the United States’ backyard considering the aggressive actions taken by the United States in Taiwan and Ukraine.