By Chen Yang
Spokesperson for the White House National Security Council John Kirby said on February 14 that there is no evidence that the three unidentified flying objects recently shot down by US military aircraft are related to China. And it is likely that they were not used for malicious purposes, but for commercial or research activities. Recently, the US has hyped up the issue of monitoring by exploiting the accidental incident of a Chinese civilian unmanned airship entering US airspace. The plot of this farce is becoming more and more absurd and has even reached a point where it cannot be justified.
Talking about surveillance, the US is the best to wear the "surveillance state" hat. As Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin responded on February 14, "speaking of surveillance, the US is no doubt the number one country in the world". The history of the US monitoring the world goes back a long time. From the surveillance plan after World War I, the Project SHAMROCK after World War II, to the ECHELON surveillance system during the Cold War that enables the US to have the global intelligence collection capability; from the gathering of allies to form the Five Eyes Alliance that permeated Cold War thinking, to the PRISM implemented in the 21st century... The US has long abused its technological advantage to conduct large-scale, indiscriminate surveillance and espionage on the world, including its allies.
The US has recently been hyping up the so-called "Chinese balloon" incident, which is more likely to be due to a mentality of accusing others of its own misdeeds, rather than being driven by concerns over its national security. The lies and rumors fabricated by the US about other countries can all be found in the history of the US itself. If the US suspects that you have done something wrong, then the US must have done it before.
The international community must stay vigilant because the US is becoming more and more sensitive, and monitoring the world seems to have become a way for the US to "continue" its hegemony. According to Danish media reports, the US National Security Agency (NSA) used the opportunity of cooperating with Danish intelligence agencies to conduct surveillance activities on politicians in Germany, Sweden, Norway and France, including the then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Since the 1970s, the US intelligence agency has been manipulating Crypto AG, a Swiss-based encryption equipment supplier. While selling encryption machines to foreign governments and companies to make huge profit, the US has been stealing classified information from more than 120 countries by decoding the company's encryption technology. The website of Spain's EL PAÍS once pointed out that the US is trying to reverse the inevitable decline by controlling global information.
Even though its true face as a surveillance empire is fully exposed, the US is still unwilling to admit it. Instead, it has been trying its best to pretend to be a victim of surveillance, and has constantly staged the farce of "thieves shouting stop thief". The US has repeatedly "splashed dirty water" on China over the incident of a Chinese civilian unmanned airship straying into US airspace. In fact, the US knows very well how many US spy balloons have flown around the world.
In 2022, the US frequently sent ships and aircraft to conduct 657 close-in reconnaissance against China, including 64 in the South China Sea in January 2023 alone. This has seriously endangered China's national security and undermined regional peace and stability. Since May 2022, the US has launched a large number of high-altitude balloons in the US, and they continued to circle the world. Without the approval of relevant Chinese authorities, US balloons illegally flew over China's airspace at least 10 times, including over Xinjiang, Tibet and other places. Even the New York Times recently reported that after Edward Snowden exposed many activities of the NSA ten years ago, the whole world knew that the US had broken into the networks of Chinese telecom companies, and this is just a small portion of the US surveillance on China.
John Delury, an American scholar, and a professor at Yonsei University in the ROK, published an article on Foreign Policy on February 13. He recalled the history of the US's relentless covert surveillance of China during the Cold War and called on Americans to understand their own history of surveillance and subversion of other countries and to stay humble.
Editor's note: Originally published on haiwainet.cn, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
