Fact Check: Chinese Communist Party building spy base 90 miles from US?

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) broke a story, on June 8th, claiming, “Cuba to Host Secret Chinese Spy Base Focusing on U.S.”

Expansion or new?

The Miami Herald followed up with a report that although China was already eavesdropping on the US from Cuba, the new secret agreement will provide China with much more extensive access to America's military planning.

China is believed to already have a military presence in Cuba in a listening station in Bejucal, a town south of Havana, where there were reports in 2018 of a new radar surveillance installation. It is unclear if the new deal entails expanding this facility or constructing a new one . . . 

While China might be already collecting intelligence on the U.S. from its commercial facilities in the region, having a signals-intelligence facility “adds to China’s capabilities, especially in times of war,” said Evan Ellis, professor at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, which monitors China’s relationship with Latin America and the Caribbean.

According to the Indian Express, China would be privy to electronic communications in many American military bases.

Such a spy installation would allow Beijing to gather electronic communications from the southeastern US, which houses many US military bases, as well as monitor ship traffic . . .

The times they are “a-changin”

Professor Ellis went on to underscore the significant change the move brings to the global balance of powers.

I think it telegraphs Chinese willingness in the current difficult environment between our two countries to take some of these bolder steps and their sense, with their growing military power and economic power and the perception of the U.S. democratic disarray, that they can take these steps that maybe a decade ago, they would not have risked.

Never happened

Just hours after the WSJ report, though, the Biden administration disputed the story, as covered by Reuters: 

“We have seen the report. It's not accurate," John Kirby, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, told Reuters. But he did not specify what he thought was incorrect. . . . 

Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, a U.S. Defense Department spokesperson, said: "We are not aware of China and Cuba developing a new type of spy station."

Cuba and China joined the Biden administration in denying the report.

In Havana, Cuban Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio dismissed the report as "totally mendacious and unfounded," calling it a U.S. fabrication meant to justify Washington's decades-old economic embargo against the island . . . 

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said: "We are not aware of the case [sic] and as a result we can't give a comment right now."

But if it did, stay out

China's response differed from Cuba's, as its official's claim that they were “not aware” of the spy base was not as strong a denial as Cuba's “unfounded” remark. At the same time, The Guardian reports that the same spokesperson for China, Wang Wenbin, referred to the spy base as a Cuban “internal affair” with which America should “stop interfering.”

As we all know, spreading rumours and slander is a common tactic of the United States, and wantonly interfering in the internal affairs of other countries is its patent. The United States should reflect on itself and stop interfering in Cuba’s internal affairs under the banner of freedom and democracy, and immediately cancel the economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba.

It did

Two days after the WSJ report, the Biden administration completely reversed itself when an official told Fox News the report was not only true but actually understated, as the Chinese spying operation from Cuba was much further along than initially suspected.

This is an ongoing issue, and not a new development . . . This [spying] effort included the presence of PRC [People's Republic of China] intelligence collection facilities in Cuba. In fact, the PRC conducted an upgrade of its intelligence collection facilities in Cuba in 2019. This is well-documented in the intelligence record."

Picking up where the Soviets left off

Bloomberg provides some background on the spying operation in an article titled, “China’s Spying in Cuba Picks Up Where the Soviet Union Left Off”.

For half a century, America’s top geopolitical rival used a spy base in nearby Cuba to steal US military secrets by listening in on phone and data communications.

Twenty years after the Soviet Union shut down that post, China may be picking up where Moscow left off.

Beijing’s reported efforts at surveillance from Cuba are reminiscent of Lourdes, a Soviet-built listening post just south of Havana that once employed thousands of personnel to eavesdrop on sensitive US phone and data communications.

Bloomberg goes on to claim that, unlike the Soviets, China is only interested in money, not defeating the West.

But where the Soviet Union sought ideological conquests in Cuba and throughout Latin America, China’s efforts are rooted in burgeoning economic relations.

Bloomberg's analysis would be considered disinformation by Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn, who predicted perestroika two decades before it happened and described it as a false liberalization planned from the outset to eventually be reversed, piece-by-piece, like Vladimir Lenin's New Economic Policy, as described by Frontline News in How one defector got it right. Golitsyn would view the reinstatement of spying operations by a major communist power as a fulfillment of the false liberalization strategy, albeit by a different communist nation.

Picture

One Twitter account posted what it claimed to be a picture of the already in-use facility.

Verdict

The claim that the Chinese Communist Party plans to build a spy base 90 miles from America, in Cuba, is not only true, but it may have already been largely carried out.