The Chinese government responded forcefully on Monday to a blistering speech by U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios that he delivered last week at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal where he slammed countries for “opening their arms” to the Chinese tech giant Huawei. During his speech, Kratsios also made reference to the 2018 report by the French newspaper Le Monde that Huawei was allegedly involved in a massive spying operation at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang fired back at both Kratsios and the AU spying allegations during his regular press briefing in Beijing. “The US official (Kratsios) again tried to hype up “China using Huawei to steal AU data”. It is apparently a despicable ploy driven by ulterior motives,” said Geng. He then went on to accuse the United States of “running a planned and organized campaign of secrets theft, monitoring, and surveillance on foreign governments, businesses, and individuals.”