The U.S. had been listening to the calls of European leaders for years, and recently, the U.S. military leaked documents also exposed the mass surveillance of allies by the U.S., Spokesperson of Chinese Foreign Ministry Wang Wenbin said on Tuesday at a daily presser.

The world is seeing more and more clearly that the U.S. is trying to maintain network "hegemony" not "security," Wang said. 

On Monday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk claimed in a video excerpt of Fox News that the U.S. government has "full access" to users' private direct messages (DMs) and he was shocked to find out about the government's ability to read users' direct messages on his platform.

It is not surprising that a country that does not even respect the privacy of its allied leaders has been monitoring people's private data on social networks, the spokesperson said.

Pointing out that the U.S. has accused companies in other countries of monitoring and stealing U.S. user data without any basis in fact, Wang said that "it reaffirms a widely circulated saying on the Internet that the U.S. accuses others of things that either it has done or is doing."

(Cover photo: Foreign Ministry. /CFP)