China has been spying from Cuba for a while and upgraded its intelligence assortment services there in 2019, a Biden administration official stated on Saturday, following a report a couple of new spying effort underway on the island.

The Wall Road Journal on Thursday reported that China had reached a secret take care of Cuba to ascertain an digital eavesdropping facility on the island roughly 100 miles (160 km) from Florida, however the U.S. and Cuban governments solid sturdy doubt on the report.

The Biden administration official, talking on situation of anonymity, stated the media’s characterization “doesn’t comport with our understanding,” however didn’t specify how the report was incorrect nor handle intimately whether or not there have been efforts by China to construct a brand new eavesdropping facility in Cuba.

The official stated the problem predated Joe Biden’s presidency, as had Beijing’s efforts to strengthen its intelligence assortment infrastructure worldwide.

“That is an ongoing subject, and never a brand new improvement,” the official stated. “The PRC (Folks’s Republic of China) carried out an improve of its intelligence assortment services in Cuba in 2019. That is well-documented within the intelligence file.”

Requested for remark, an official at China’s embassy in Washington pointed to Friday’s assertion by a Chinese language overseas ministry spokesperson who accused the U.S. of “spreading rumors and slander” with discuss of a Cuba spy station, and of being “probably the most highly effective hacker empire on the earth.”

The Cuban authorities didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

On Thursday, Cuban Vice International Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio dismissed the Journal’s report as “completely mendacious” and referred to as it a U.S. fabrication meant to justify Washington’s decades-old financial embargo in opposition to the island.

He stated Cuba rejects all overseas army presence in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Consideration surrounding alleged Chinese language spying from Cuba comes as Washington and Beijing are taking tentative steps to appease tensions that spiked after a suspected Chinese language high-altitude spy balloon crossed america earlier than the U.S. army shot it down off the East Coast in February.

That features a journey to China that U.S. officers say Secretary of State Antony Blinken is planning for June 18. Washington’s prime diplomat had earlier scrapped the go to over the spy balloon incident.

The Biden administration official stated that regardless of the previous administration of Donald Trump being conscious of the Chinese language basing effort in Cuba and making some makes an attempt to handle the problem, “we weren’t making sufficient progress and wanted a extra direct method.”

The official stated U.S. diplomats had engaged governments that had been contemplating internet hosting Chinese language bases and had exchanged data with them.

“Our specialists assess that our diplomatic efforts have slowed the PRC down,” the official stated. “We predict the PRC is not fairly the place that they had hoped to be.”