China's Spies Move to Cuba
by Gordon G. Chang • February 7, 2025 at 5:00 am
The Chinese military is firmly embedded in a country not far from Key West, Florida.
At the moment, Cuba needs Chinese cash and might therefore accede to granting China greater access to the island.
[Secretary of State Marco] Rubio, however, is focused on the Caribbean basin, as the itinerary for his first trip shows. Moreover, the new secretary of state is apparently willing to use raw American power to strong-arm countries.
Forget Europe or the hotspots of East Asia and the Middle East, Marco Rubio's first foreign trip as secretary of state took him to one Caribbean and four Central American states. The tour tells us that the Trump foreign policy is focusing on the region closest to the American homeland.
That is bad news for the leftists and hardline regimes in the Western Hemisphere, especially the Republic of Cuba and its new patron, the People's Republic of China. The Chinese military is firmly embedded in a country not far from Key West, Florida.
In June 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that China and Cuba had agreed in principle to establish a new eavesdropping site on Cuban soil. The Biden administration termed the story inaccurate, but two days later the White House declassified intelligence showing that Chinese signals intelligence collection facilities had been operating in Cuba since at least 2019.
