China reportedly secured a secret billion-dollar deal with Cuba to build a listening station targeting the U.S. on the island nation less than 100 miles off the American mainland.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that China and Cuba have reached a secret agreement for China to establish an electronic eavesdropping facility on the island, allowing Chinese intelligence services to “scoop up electronic communications throughout the southeastern U.S., where many military bases are located, and monitor U.S. ship traffic.”
The report, citing officials familiar with the matter, says, “China has agreed to pay cash-strapped Cuba several billion dollars to allow it to build the eavesdropping station, and that the two countries had reached an agreement in principle.” The report says U.S. officials described the intelligence on the plans as “convincing.”
“U.S. officials described the intelligence on the planned Cuba site, apparently gathered in recent weeks, as convincing,” the WSJ said. “They said the base would enable China to conduct signals intelligence, known in the espionage world as sigint [signals intelligence], which could include the monitoring of a range of communications, including emails, phone calls and satellite transmissions.”
Fox News could not immediately verify the report’s finding.
“We are not going to comment on those specific reports. On a broader level, we are very aware of the PRC’s attempts to invest in infrastructure around the world that may have military purposes, including in the western hemisphere,” a U.S. Department of Defense official told Fox News. “We will continue to monitor it closely, and remain confident that we are able to meet all our security commitments at home and across the region.”
Politico later reported, citing two senior U.S. officials, that “China is in talks with Cuba to establish a foothold there to spy on the United States.”
“The officials, granted anonymity to discuss an extremely sensitive intelligence matter, said China was in direct conversations with Cuba to set up a base on the island nation just 100 miles from the United States,” Politico reports. “It would allow Beijing to collect signals intelligence on southeastern portions of America, home to many military facilities and major industries. Evidence of the negotiations came to light in recent weeks, the officials said.”
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Thursday the reports of a planned China-Cuba spy base were “not accurate.”
Asked for clarification, the National Security Council would not point to specific details but told Fox News, “both reports are inaccurate.”
Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla, who sits on the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the U.S. and the Chinese Community Party, told Fox News Digital that as the only member of Congress born in Cuba, though his office does not have information corroborating the WSJ report about an alleged Chinese listening station, he is not surprised.
“The Russians have had a lot of cases like this in Cuba for a long, long time. And frankly, surprised me that it took so long for the Chinese to get there,” Gimenez said. “The gloves are off. The hood is off, too. So right now, you know, is with all the provocative actions around the world, this does not surprise me.”
“We all need to wake up to the fact of the growing presence and the growing influence of the Chinese Communist Party in our hemisphere,” Gimenez told Fox News Digital, noting the CCP’s growing presence in the Bahamas, the Chinese establishing communications and relay stations for their space program in South America, Chinese control of the rare earth minerals coming from South America, and growing trade between China and South and Central America.
“It’s provocative, and it sends a message that, you know, here we are,” he added of the reported Chinese listening station in Cuba. “We have an ally 90 miles from your shore, and we’re going to set up our listening stations, and we’re going to do whatever we want.”
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“It’s also to show that they’re increasing influence and power in the world and that they are not afraid of the United States,” Gimenez said.
The report comes as the Biden administration has been working to cool diplomatic relations since February’s Chinese spy craft controversy enflamed tensions.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who canceled a planned trip to China amid the scandal months ago, reportedly rescheduled a visit to Beijing, where he will potentially meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the coming weeks.
“I’m not a fan of the Biden administration. I’m surely not a fan of Mr. Blinken. And so, you know, those efforts that they’re taking in Beijing, while I’m not going to criticize them, I have sincere doubts that anything fruitful will come forward,” Gimenez told Fox News Digital. “And when I mean fruitful, fruitful for the United States of America, it may be fruitful for the Chinese Communist Party, but I doubt that it’s going to be fruitful to the United States of America.”
The White House faced some criticism for sending two diplomats, Daniel Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, and Sarah Beran, the National Security Council’s senior director for China and Taiwan affairs, to Beijing on the anniversary of the massacre in Tienanmen Square this week.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and China’s defense minister, Gen. Li Shangfu, exchanged a war of words at a conference in Singapore over the weekend after the U.S. military said a Chinese destroyer maneuvered unsafely in front of an American warship transiting the Taiwan Strait.
Li accused the U.S. of “provocation” in the Asia-Pacific region. Austin bemoaned the lack of military-to-miltary communication with China, as well as Beijing having denied a request for a meeting between Austin and Li on the sidelines of the conference until the U.S. lifts 2018 sanctions against Li.
Though no substantive exhange occurred, Austin and Li did shake hands at a dinner in Singapore during a widely publicized photo-op.
Gimenez acknowledged that the Chinese will likely view plans for a listening station in Cuba as justified as the U.S. continues funding Taiwan.
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He added that the House China select committee aims to continue investigating the influence of the CCP both militarily, and through the Belts and Road projects, which involves China financing and putting into debt countries around the world through their infrastructure projects. The Cuba listening station report piles on the committee’s concerns, he said.
“They’re very aggressive, and they don’t play by our rules,” Gimenez said. “That’s where they have a little bit of an advantage on us to have long range plans of what they want to do, how they want to accomplish it. We’re not there, and we need to get there, and we need to face this threat, and we need to understand that it is a threat.”