Snowden claims to have shown the Chinese paper in Hong Kong evidence that the US was carrying out cyberattacks against China.

Snowden reportedly showed reporter Lana Lam documents that showed NSA had been hacking computers in Hong Kong and on the mainland since 2009. He estimated there were hundreds of targets in Hong Kong and mainland China, including the Chinese University of Hong Kong. None of the documents revealed any information about Chinese military systems, Snowden said.

“We hack network backbones - like huge internet routers, basically - that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,” Snowden told Lam.

China’s own online espionage efforts were put in the spotlight earlier this year after a report from U.S. security firm Mandiant that accused military-linked groups of hacking major U.S. companies. After that story, China hit back saying Washington was the “real hacking empire.”