China Slams US Over Hacking Allegations, Asks to Explain 'PRISM-Gate Incident'

Amid US media allegations suggesting that China is using two Chinese hotels as spy centers, Beijing has urged Washington to explain their own spying instead of conducting “groundless” smear attempts.

Earlier in the week, The Washington Times citing an open-source intelligence dossier published an article where it suggested that the 4PLA, a unit attached to the Chinese Defense Ministry, used the Jintang and Seasons hotels in Beijing to conduct espionage operations.

However, the Ministry of National Defense vigorously denied that any hotels in the Haidian District of Beijing were ever used as a base for any cyber-espionage operations.

“The Chinese military has never supported any hacking activities, and the Chinese government has always been firmly opposed to and cracking down on relevant criminal activities in accordance with law, including network attacks,” China's Defense Ministry said.

He further said that relevant accusations are completely baseless and this is a bad act of smearing China.

The ministry called on Washington to stop making “groundless accusation against China.” And instead of that Washington should “give a clear explanation on the PRISM Gate incident,” not just to China, but to the entire international community.

PRISM is a former secret code name for a program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collected private internet communications of users from at least nine major US internet companies including Google, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, etc.

It began in 2007 under the George W. Bush administration and its existence was leaked six years later by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who warned that the extent of mass data collection was far greater than the public knew and included what he characterized as dangerous and criminal activities.