Beijing blasted Washington's baseless slander of a Chinese enterprise engaging in subsea espionage on Monday.

US officials are privately delivering an unusual warning to telecommunications companies including Google and Meta that undersea cables that ferry internet traffic across the Pacific Ocean "could be vulnerable to tampering by Chinese repair ships", The Wall Street Journal reported last week.

US State Department officials claimed a state-controlled Chinese company, S.B. Submarine Systems, that helps repair international cables, appeared to be hiding its vessels' locations from radio and satellite tracking services, which the officials and others said defied easy explanation.

The company said in a statement last week that it strictly complies with relevant laws and regulations, international practices and industry standards, and its daily operations are in line with the regulations set by the International Maritime Organization.

China firmly opposes the US practice of overstretching the concept of national security to attack and smear Chinese enterprises, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Monday.

The Chinese government always encourages its companies to operate under market principles and international rules, Mao told a daily news conference.

The US government has deliberately discredited and oppressed telecommunications companies in China and around the world, aiming to create a global surveillance network dominated by the US with no rival and under no oversight, so as to leave a door open for its blatant eavesdropping and espionage, she said. "The higher the pitch of US framing of others, the clearer the world will see what a 'hacking empire' the US truly is," Mao said.

She urged the US government to reflect on its behavior and stop vilifying Chinese companies.

zhoujin@chinadaily.com.cn