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According to a new report, China is massively expanding its spy facilities in Cuba. Important US military facilities are located in the immediate vicinity.
A year ago, the Wall Street Journal the bombshell: China wants to build a listening station in Cuba with the aim of spying on the USA. The spy facility can intercept communications from the southeast of the USA; Beijing is paying Cuba “several billion dollars” for the right to operate from the island, the newspaper wrote in June 2023. A few days later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken largely confirmed the report and stated that China had already “upgraded its intelligence gathering facilities in Cuba in 2019”. Beijing rejected the allegations at the time.
Now a Report by the US think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) new evidence of Chinese activities in the island state, which is only about 160 kilometers from Florida. “China’s efforts to expand its global intelligence capabilities have led it to the doorstep of the United States,” write the authors. There are many targets for Chinese espionage in the region: The USA operates several military bases in Florida, and the spaceports at Cape Canaveral are also located there.
Report: China uses four sites in Cuba to spy on the US
In Cuba, the CSIS report examines four locations where China is “likely” conducting espionage operations. Three of the locations are located immediately south of the capital Havana; a fourth in the extreme southeast of the island, near the city of Santiago de Cuba, was not previously known to be a listening station.
Cuba is the perfect location “to monitor sensitive communications and activities in the region, including those of the US military,” says the CSIS report. In order to reliably intercept communication signals such as radio waves, a direct “line of sight” between the transmitter and receiver is required. Physical obstacles and the curvature of the earth make surveillance from a great distance difficult or even impossible – an obstacle for China if it really wants to spy on facilities in the southeast of the USA. That is why the bases in Cuba are so important to Beijing. The two socialist dictatorships China and Cuba have had close relations for decades.
Satellite images analyzed by the CSIS authors suggest that Cuba has massively expanded the four sites it monitored in recent years. Space surveillance facilities have been expanded at the two sites in Bejucal and Calabazar near Havana, even though Cuba does not operate its own satellite or space program. China could use the listening stations to intercept data sent from US satellites to military facilities, for example. China could also monitor rocket launches at Cape Canaveral from there. “This is likely to be of great interest to China, as the country is trying to take over the US’s leading role in space technology.”
“Would enable China to get a more accurate picture of US military practices”
“Collecting data on activities such as military exercises, missile tests, missile launches, and submarine maneuvers would allow China to gain a more accurate picture of U.S. military practices,” the CSIS analysts write. Even encrypted data is useful: “Information on the frequency, origin, direction, and speed of communications traffic can have significant intelligence value.”
The CSIS report does not provide any evidence that China is actually using the Cuban listening stations. The Chinese embassy in Washington has already rejected the accusations. “The USA is undoubtedly the leading listening power and does not even spare its allies,” a spokesman told the Wall Street Journal “The US side has repeatedly played up China’s establishment of spy bases or its conduct of surveillance activities in Cuba.”
Relations between China and the USA under severe strain
Even before the revelations of last June, China’s global espionage activities were in the focus of the world public: At the beginning of 2023, the USA discovered a suspected Chinese spy balloon over its territory and shot it down shortly afterwards. At the time, Beijing spoke of a weather balloon that had gone off course. The incident put a massive strain on relations between the two nuclear powers, and US Secretary of State Blinken canceled a planned visit to China at short notice.
Only a meeting between US President Joe Biden and China’s head of state and party leader Xi Jinping in November in California brought relaxation to relations. In addition to the espionage allegations, China’s support for the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and the escalating trade conflict are putting a strain on relations between Beijing and Washington.
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