This puts a premium on both countries’ ability to gather intelligence to understand each other’s capabilities, actions, and strategic intent around the globe,” said Lyle Morris, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.Ī Chinese J-16 fighter moves close to a US reconnaissance aircraft flying in international airspace over the South China Sea on Friday, May 26, 2023. “Crisis communications are arguably in their worst state since 1979.

They underscore how intelligence gathering – an activity meant to go on without detection, out of the public eye – is becoming an increasingly prominent flashpoint in the US-China relationship.ĬIA Director Bill Burns secretly traveled to China in May to meet counterparts and emphasize the importance of maintaining open lines of communication in intelligence channels, CNN reported earlier this month. The situation is just the latest in a string of allegations of spying between the two in recent months. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to land in Beijing over the weekend following the postponement of his earlier trip planned for February after a Chinese surveillance balloon meandered across the continental US, hovering over sensitive military sites before being shot down by an American fighter plane.īut with Blinken poised to make a trip seen as a key step to mend fractured US-China communications, another espionage controversy has flared in recent days following media reports that China had reached a deal to build a spy perch on the island of Cuba.īeijing has said it wasn’t “aware” of the situation, while the White House said the reports were not accurate – with Blinken earlier this week saying China upgraded its spying facilities there in 2019. For the second time this year, concerns of Chinese spying on the United States have cast a shadow over a planned visit to China by the US’ top diplomat as the two superpowers try to improve fractured ties while keeping a watchful eye on each other.

2016 chinese espionage