The Chinese foreign ministry Monday urged the US to explain and stop alleged spying activities after media reported that the US security agency has been spying on telecommunications giant Huawei, former leaders, foreign and commerce ministries and banks.

Foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei made the remarks at a regular press briefing Monday. China is greatly concerned about the news reports, Hong said, adding that media organizations have recently disclosed a lot of eavesdropping, surveillance and stealing of secret information by the United States, targeting other countries, including China. Hong said China demands that the US explain itself and stop such acts, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

German weekly Der Spiegel reported on Saturday that the US National Security Agency (NSA) has accessed the secret source code for certain Huawei products and the operations were conducted with involvement from the White House, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The weekly also said that NSA workers also succeeded in accessing the email archive. Because Huawei directed all mail traffic from its employees through its base in Shenzhen, where the NSA had infiltrated the network, the Americans were able to read email sent by company workers from January 2009.

"The US holds technological advantages in the Internet and it will maintain the central role over the Internet," Xin Qiang, a deputy director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times, noting that this capability enables the US to pursue hegemony by surveillance.

According to The Times, US officials see Huawei as a security threat and have blocked the company from making business deals in the US, and they worried that it would furnish its equipment with "back doors" that could enable China's military or Chinese-backed hackers to swipe corporate and State secrets.

Agencies contributed to this story