China has been operating military and spy facilities in Cuba for years, US officials say

China has been operating military and intelligence facilities in Cuba since at least 2019 and is continuing to expand its intelligence gathering capabilities around the world, a Biden administration official and two other sources told CNN Saturday.

The administration official said China “conducted an upgrade of its intelligence collection facilities in Cuba in 2019” under the Trump administration and described the challenge as “inherited.”

“This is well-documented in the intelligence record,” the official said.

The sources acknowledged that China has been spying on the US from various sites based in Cuba for years after the White House denied reports earlier this week that China was planning to build a new signals intelligence facility on the island.

Earlier this week, CNN confirmed a report by the Wall Street Journal that Cuba agreed to allow China to build a new spying facility on the island that could allow the Chinese to eavesdrop on electronic communications across the southeastern US.

That deal is in principle, one of the sources familiar with the intelligence said, and the facility is not believed to have been built.

John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, called the Journal’s report “not accurate” and on Saturday the administration official further explained “this is an ongoing issue, and not a new development, and the arrangement as characterized in the reporting does not comport with our understanding.”

One of the sources described the discrepancy as “semantic quibbling.”

But the revelations about expanding Chinese intelligence operations in Cuba comes as US-China relations have reached a low point, following the spy balloon incident in February and several aggressive maneuvers by Chinese aircraft and ships against US assets in the South China Sea more recently.
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