After Russia, China! In early June, a White House spokesperson confirmed the existence of a Chinese listening station on Cuban soil for at least three years. Located in Bejucal, 32 kilometers south of Havana, it allows the Chinese to intercept communications, e-mails and telephone conversations. A nod to history: during the “missile crisis”, this same locality housed Russian rockets. Also in 1962, the Soviets had installed a listening station in Lourdes, near the capital, of the same type as that of the new Chinese base. It was then the largest of its kind outside the USSR, with 1,500 technicians, engineers and intelligence agents.
© / The Express
It must be said that to spy on Uncle Sam, the geographical position of Cuba, 160 kilometers from the coast of Florida, is ideal. Especially since the “Sunshine State” is home to military and naval bases and two candidates for the White House: Ron DeSantis, governor of the state, and Donald Trump. The Florida Strait is also the required passage for part of the US Navy fleet. “Installing a listening station may seem a bit ‘old school’ in the age of cyber and space wars, but it is a useful complement to more sophisticated means”, judge Emmanuel Véron, specialist in contemporary China and teacher at the Naval Academy.
Cuban espionage, one of the best in the world
The case also has a political dimension, believes Craig Singleton in the columns of the wall street journal, the daily that revealed the existence of the listening station. “By settling in the American backyard, Beijing is raising its global defense strategy by a notch and sending a message to Washington”, analyzes this China specialist within the think-tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “This is to signal to Americans annoyance with their presence in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.” However, the importance of the Bejucal listening station, which is only a small component of the Middle Kingdom’s spy network, should not be overestimated. “Everywhere on the planet, resumes Emmanuel Véron, Beijing deploys means of espionage in its embassies, its consulates, its cultural centers or even in buildings built by it.”
Cuba, for its part, does not content itself with providing land and buildings. When it comes to espionage, the dictatorship has know-how to spare. By the CIA’s own admission, Cuban espionage is one of the best in the world. Its privileged field of action: the United States, of course. “Castro spies have been operating there for decades and are often less detectable there than their Chinese or Russian counterparts. They can thus exchange valuable information with friendly countries in exchange for advantages”, explains to L’Express Brian Latell, former expert from Cuba to the CIA.
Be that as it may, the arrival of the Chinese surprised the Cubans. “We thought that, in the region, Beijing was mainly waging an economic battle through investments in infrastructure, notes the historian and political opponent Manuel Cuesta Morua, reached by telephone in Havana. But the Chinese do not see Cuba as a place where you can do business, unlike Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.” Also, it should be remembered that the China-Cuba relationship has not always been harmonious. “In the context of the Sino-Soviet conflict, Fidel Castro had chosen Moscow while Che Guevara, very critical of the USSR, was well disposed towards Beijing, recalls Franco-Venezuelan historian Elizabeth Burgos, present at the Tricontinental Conference in Havana in 1966, which brought together the countries of the Third World. Worse, Fidel, furious, realized that the Chinese were doing entryism at various levels of the Cuban system. speech of the Tricontinental, Fidel flatly called Mao an old gaga!” But in the Florida Strait, the wheel turns. China’s time has come.