China slams ‘bandit’ CIA after economic espionage remarks

AFP | Beijing

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China condemned on Friday remarks by the CIA’s deputy director, Michael Ellis, who has implied that US intelligence agencies were spying on Beijing, heightening tensions ahead of a planned leaders’ meeting.

Ellis told a cybersecurity conference on Tuesday that the United States was carrying out economic espionage operations to respond to the Chinese “threat”.

“Our economy is intertwined with theirs,” giving Beijing potential leverage over Washington, Ellis said, adding that the “CIA has to respond differently”.

“We have to be able to collect foreign intelligence relevant to that economic security dimension of the competition, which means we need expertise about how to collect that information, how to analyse it.”