Tensions Between Chinese and US Embassies in Panama Over Alleged Espionage

The Chinese Embassy spokesperson stressed that the United States is ‘slanderously accusing other countries’.  The spokesperson for the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China has described as baseless the claims of the United States Southern Command that a group based in its country is infiltrating the systems of the Paraguayan government.  The spokesman said in a statement that the recent accusation made by the United States Embassy in Panama regarding the cyberattack detected by the Government of Paraguay was unfounded.  However, the United States Embassy in Panama on its X account published a statement dated November 26 from its diplomatic delegation in Paraguay and the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology of the aforementioned South American country.

Regarding the statement published on X by the US headquarters in Panama, the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China indicated that the letter only presented the most recent version of the incessant sensationalist campaign of the United States on the “Chinese cyber threat.”  Therefore, “in the face of this slander,” the Chinese Embassy in Panama feels the obligation and urgent need to remind that the United States used advanced technologies to launch cyberattacks as if other countries were doing it. He also said that it “inserted character strings in other languages, such as Chinese, to deliberately mislead the traceability attribution analysis and shift the blame to other countries. 

The Southern Command statement highlighted that the Government of Paraguay and its collaboration recently completed a joint cybersecurity review of the Paraguayan government’s networks designed to strengthen the security of critical assets.  “During the review, the cyber espionage actor Flax Typhoon was identified, a group based in the People’s Republic of China with ties to the government,” the Southern Command said in a statement.  The Southern Command also stressed that this review is part of the ongoing cooperation between the United States and Paraguay.  Meanwhile, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Panama stressed that the United States, on the one hand, “slanderously accuses other countries of making preparations” to launch cyberattacks.  “But it also pre-installs backdoors in Internet equipment products in collaboration with large Internet companies or equipment suppliers to attack global supply chains,” the statement said.