China has called the US a “villain” following the latest wave of accusations against Washington over cyber surveillance by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, in a sign that the case could add pressure to ties between the world’s two largest economies.
The South China Morning Post quoted Mr Snowden in its newest report as saying that the US National Security Agency “does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cell phone companies to steal all of your SMS data”.
This followed allegations by Mr Snowden a day earlier that Washington had hacked into Tsinghua University, home to one of China’s main telecoms network backbones, as recently as January.