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21-10-2025
BEIJING: China has accused the US of stealing secrets and infiltrating the country’s national time centre, warning that serious breaches could have disrupted communication networks, financial systems, the power supply and the international standard time.
The US National Security Agency has been carrying out a cyber-attack operation on the National Time Service Center over an extended period of time, China’s State Security Ministry said in a statement on its WeChat account on Sunday.
The ministry said it found evidence tracing stolen data and credentials as far back as 2022, which were used to spy on the staff’s mobile devices and network systems at the centre.
The US intelligence agency had “exploited a vulnerability” in the messaging service of a foreign smartphone brand to access staff members’ devices in 2022, the ministry said, without naming the brand.
The national time centre is a research institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences that generates, maintains and broadcasts China’s standard time.
The ministry’s investigation also found that the United States launched attacks on the centre’s internal network systems and attempted to attack the high-precision ground-based timing system in 2023 and 2024.
The US embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
China and the US have increasingly traded accusations of cyberattacks in the past few years, each portraying the other as its primary cyber threat.
The latest accusations come amid renewed trade tensions over China’s expanded rare earths export controls, and the US threatening to further raise tariffs on Chinese goods.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has targeted top economic rival China with a cascade of tariff orders on billions of dollars of imported goods aimed at narrowing a wide trade deficit, bringing back lost manufacturing and crippling the fentanyl trade.
The timeline below, in reverse chronology, shows the development of the US-China trade war this year.
October 14, China begins collecting additional port fees on US-linked vessels but says Chinese-built ships are exempted. The US also plans to implement additional port fees for Chinese ships on the same day.
Beijing says it informed Washington of its expanded rare earths controls before announcing the measures on October 9, and that there was working-level communication on the matter as recently as October 13. It chastises the US for seeking talks while also making threats.
October 13, Plans for Trump to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in late October remain on track, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says.
He says there was substantial communication between both countries over the weekend and more meetings were expected.
October 12, following China’s announcement it was expanding its rare earths export controls, US Trade Representative Jamison Greer says the US reached out to China for a phone call but Beijing deferred. China calls new US tariffs hypocritical, and defends its export curbs.
October 10, Trump revives the trade war with additional levies of 100% on China’s US-bound exports, along with new export controls on “any and all critical software” by November 1, ending an uneasy truce struck between both countries in August.
Trump says there is no reason to meet with Xi but also did not cancel plans to meet. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
