China on Friday sarcastically "thanked" the US international operations spy chief, adding that the CIA head had revealed that its "spies are everywhere."
"Thank him (William Burns) for reminding us," Wang Wenbin, spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, replied when asked to comment on the CIA chief's comments about China in an opinion piece published by Foreign Affairs magazine.
"China will take precautions as usual and will not allow the US to get its way through illegal moves," Wang told reporters in Beijing, according to a transcript of his news conference.
"As the head of the largest spy agency in the world, William Burns openly told everyone that US spies are everywhere," said Wang.
Dubbing China "the bigger long-term threat," Burns wrote in the magazine that the CIA has "committed substantially more resources toward China-related intelligence collection, operations, and analysis around the world—more than doubling the percentage of our overall budget focused on China over just the last two years."
"We're hiring and training more Mandarin speakers while stepping up efforts across the world to compete with China, from Latin America to Africa to the Indo-Pacific," said Burns in the piece published on Monday.
"China is committed to a path of peaceful development. China's development represents opportunities for global development and the growth of the force for world peace," said Wang in Beijing.
