China to Build Station That Could Spy on U.S. from Cuba, Officials Say

Representatives for the Central Intelligence Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

Carlos Fernández de Cossio, a foreign ministry official in Cuba, said that reports of plans to build a Chinese spy base in the country were “totally false and unfounded.” A representative for the Chinese embassy said Beijing was “not aware of the case.”

China and the United States routinely conduct surveillance operations on one another. The United States sends surveillance flights over the South China Sea, deploys military assets in allied host nations around the Pacific and sells and supplies arms to Taiwan, a democratic island that the Chinese government considers part of its territory.

American officials have accused China in recent years of ambitious hacking attacks against the U.S. government and corporations, trying to recruit agents and assets inside and outside the United States and monitoring and threatening Chinese dissenters overseas.

That Beijing appears to be pursuing a closer arrangement with Cuba is not itself surprising, analysts say. The two countries have forged increasingly close ties since the end of the Cold War. China is Cuba’s largest trading partner, and plays a role in the island’s agricultural, pharmaceutical, telecommunications and infrastructural industries. Beijing also owns a significant measure of Havana’s foreign debt.

Cuba’s proximity to the United States has long made it a desirable strategic foothold for U.S. adversaries, perhaps most famously during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Soviet Union made and then backed down from plans to place nuclear missiles on the island nation. Today, the United States has a largely inimical relationship with Cuba, which, like China, is controlled by a Communist government.

Diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba were put on ice shortly after Fidel Castro’s Communist regime came to power in 1959; the relations were only fully restored during President Barack Obama’s tenure. President Donald J. Trump reversed part of that move by reinstating certain travel bans to Cuba and re-designating the country as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Cuban officials have asked the Biden administration to lift this designation but it has remained in place. Still, Mr. Biden has relaxed some of Mr. Trump’s other restrictions. Cuba also continues to treat the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay, which was established in the early 20th century, as an illegal occupation.