Officials Monday condemned a number of US media claims that the
nation had been engaged in espionage there, as attempts to
"denigrate" China and play up the so-called "China threat."
Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan, in a response to a report
carried by the Washington Times alleging that China sent spies to
the US to steal sensitive intelligence, said it violates news
ethnics and cannot win readers' trust.
A report written by Bill Gertz, which was published in the
paper's August 5 edition, quoted a Pentagon report claiming that
two Chinese students studying in the United States supplied China's
military with US defence technology that allowed Beijing to produce
a special metal used in sensors and weapons.
The Washington Times said that the alleged espionage, the
subject of an ongoing investigation, allowed China's military to
develop a version of the substance known as Terfenol-D, which cost
the US Navy millions of dollars in research to create.
Kong said that Gertz is notorious for writing articles which
attempt to "denigrate" China and play up the "China threat.''
Gertz said in his report that a FBI official said Chinese
Government uses people who study advanced technology in the United
States to infiltrate US companies to gain access to sensitive
information and then return to China and set up their own companies
or provide the information to the military.
China's embassy in Washington also refuted another report by the
Associated Press as "totally groundless."
An AP report earlier this month said that the FBI believes China
has more than 3,000 "front" companies in the United States whose
real purpose is to direct espionage efforts. Some of the thousands
of Chinese visitors, students and business people who go to the
United States each year also have a government intelligence task to
perform, it claimed.
Chinese Embassy spokesman Sun Weide indicated that by the end of
last year, there were only 681 registered Chinese companies in the
US.
"It is impossible that there are thousands of Chinese espionage
companies," Sun told China Daily Monday in a telephone
interview.
Sun said that there are always "a small number of people" in the
US who cling to the Cold War mentality and harbor prejudice and
hostility towards China, saying that their attempt is both
deplorable and doomed to fail.
Sun indicated that the improvement of Sino-US relations conforms
with the fundamental interests of the two countries and the two
peoples.
"We hope those who have cooked up the so-called China Spy Case
see clearly the trend of history and immediately stop their
despicable acts of wantonly attacking China," Sun added.
(China Daily August 12, 2003)