A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman would not confirm or deny a New York Times report that more than a dozen C. I. A. informants were killed or imprisoned.
The Chinese government has the obligation to defend its national security and the legal authority to protect China ’s interests, a government spokeswoman said on Monday, the first official response to a New York Times report on the dismantling of C. I. A. espionage operations in China.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying, speaking during a regularly scheduled news conference in Beijing, did not confirm or deny The Times’s report that for two years starting in 2010, more than a dozen C. I. A. sources were killed or imprisoned, crippling United States intelligence gathering in China.
“I am not aware of the details of that report, ” Ms. Hua said, according to an official transcript. “But I can tell you that China’s national security organ is investigating and handling organizations, personnel and activities that endanger China’s national security and interests and fully perform its duty with the authorization by law.”
“I do not want to say more about the normal performance of duty by the national security organ, ” she added.
The Times’s article cited 10 former and current American officials who described a vast and damaging breach of intelligence-gathering efforts in China, the cause of which remains under debate.
Global Times, a stridently nationalist newspaper owned by the Chinese Communist Party, criticized the article but also said China should be praised for its counterespionage efforts.
“If C. I. A. spying operations in China were crippled, the U. S. has nothing to be proud of, ” it said in an editorial, which was carried in both its English- and Chinese-language editions . “But the N.Y.T. report portrayed the people that spied for the U. S. as innocents, but the Chinese national security forces as merciless.”
It added that the events reported should be considered “a sweeping victory” for China.
“If this article is telling the truth, we would like to applaud China’s anti-espionage activities, ” said the unsigned editorial. “Not only was the C. I. A.’s spy network dismantled, but Washington had no idea what happened and which part of the spy network had gone wrong.”
The commentary took issue with one specific detail of the story, saying the description of one C. I. A. source being shot in a courtyard was “purely fabricated.” Global Times did not offer any evidence for that assessment.
On Monday, Ms. Hua also confirmed the arrest of six Japanese citizens in China who had been accused of endangering national security.
Yoshihide Suga, the chief cabinet secretary of Japan, said on Monday that six men were detained in Shandong and Hainan Provinces, coastal areas that are home to Chinese Navy bases.
