Beijing called for a halt on Tuesday to what it called unscrupulous US cyberspying, saying that a months-long investigation into reports on the “ugly face” of US espionage has concluded that China is a major target of those efforts.
The complaint in the form of a government agency report comes a week after US prosecutors charged five Chinese military officers with hacking into American companies to steal trade secrets.
The report by the Internet Media Research Centre, published on Tuesday by Xinhua, cited media reports of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks and said a subsequent investigation by authorities “confirmed the existence of snooping activities directed against China.”
“As a superpower, the United States takes advantage of its political, economic, military and technological hegemony to unscrupulously monitor other countries, including its allies,” said the report, dated Monday. “The United States’ spying operations have gone far beyond the legal rationale of ‘anti-terrorism’ and have exposed its ugly face of pursuing self-interest in complete disregard of moral integrity.”
It said these operations had “flagrantly breached international laws, seriously infringed upon human rights and put global cybersecurity under threat. They deserve to be rejected and condemned by the whole world.”