Chinese officials looked at sites that spanned the Atlantic Ocean, Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and the Indo-Pacific. The effort included looking at existing collection facilities in Cuba, and China conducted an upgrade of its spying operation on the island in 2019, the official said.
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Tensions between the US and China have been fraught throughout Biden’s term.
The relationship may have hit a nadir last year after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to democratically governed Taiwan. That visit, the first by a sitting House speaker since Newt Gingrich in 1997, led China, which claims the island as its territory, to launch military exercises around Taiwan.
US-China relations became further strained early this year after the US shot down a Chinese spy balloon that had crossed the United States.
Beijing also was angered by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s stopover in the US last month that included an encounter with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The speaker hosted the Taiwanese leader at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in southern California.
Still, the White House has been eager to resume high-level communications between the two sides.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is planning to travel to China next week, a trip that was cancelled as the balloon was flying over the US. Blinken expects to be in Beijing on June 18 for meetings with senior Chinese officials, according to US officials, who spoke on Friday on condition of anonymity because neither the State Department nor the Chinese foreign ministry has yet confirmed the trip.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the State Department in Washington in May. Credit: AP
CIA Director William Burns met in Beijing with his counterpart last month. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with his Chinese counterpart in Vienna over two days in May and made clear that the administration wanted to improve high-level communications with the Chinese side.
Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin recently spoke briefly with Li Shangfu, China’s minister of national defence, at the opening dinner of a security forum in Singapore. China had earlier rejected Austin’s request for a meeting on the sidelines of the forum.
AP
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