Diving Chinese 'tourists' were spotted in muddy water near the spaceport in Florida, USA. Credit: Eva Marie Ouzcategui/Getty Images
Chinese citizens have visited US military bases 100 times in recent years, sometimes posing as tourists, raising domestic alarm. The Pentagon.
According to the Wall Street Journal, these people claimed they were tourists looking for a hotel, scuba divers or people asking how to get to the nearest Burger King, which turned out to be in a military base.
Officials also mentioned incidents where Chinese citizens claimed to have booked a hotel room at the base.
In one recent case, a group claiming to be tourists tried to get past security guards at Fort Wainwright, Alaska, claiming they had booked a commercial hotel there. The base is home to the 11th Airborne Division, which is responsible for combat operations in the Arctic.
In two other unusual episodes, Chinese citizens were seen crossing an American missile range in New Mexico, and scuba divers were seen in muddy water near a missile launch site in Florida.
Fort Wainwright in Alaska is home to the US Army's 11th Airborne Division, which is responsible for combat operations in the Arctic. Credit: NB/ROD/Alamy Stock Photo
The Department of Defense, the FBI and other agencies reportedly conducted an investigation last year to try to stop these types of incidents.
The people involved have been called intruders due to their attempts, either accidentally or deliberately, to gain access to secret locations without permission.
The spate of incidents comes at a time of decline in relations between the US and China as they compete for global influence and are fighting over trade and territorial disputes in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.
Tensions rose earlier this year after the US accused China of overflying its territory and deploying a fighter jet to shoot it down. Beijing vehemently denied the allegations, repeatedly saying it was a civilian research airship that went off course.
Email hacked
Meanwhile, a trip to Beijing last week by US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo was a step to help reconnect — suffered from an attempt to hack into her email.
On Sunday, Ms Raimondo told CNN she was «very clear, direct and firm» with her Chinese counterparts, telling them that the email hack «breaks trust» and did not go unnoticed.
«They assumed they didn't know about it. And they suggested it was unintentional,” Ms. Raimondo said, “but I think it was important to put it on the table and let them know that it’s hard to gain trust when you do things like that.”
The Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. has also strongly disputed the US version of the attempted invasion of the military base.
«These allegations are purely malicious fabrications,» Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Wall Street Journal, told the Wall Street Journal.< /p>
«We call on relevant US officials to abandon the Cold War mentality, stop making baseless accusations, and do more things to build mutual trust between the two countries and friendship between the two peoples.»
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White House Officials and the Departments of Homeland Security declined to comment, while U.S. government officials sent inquiries to the FBI, which also declined to comment.
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