(Bloomberg) -- The Chinese embassy in Estonia lashed out at the Baltic nation's spy agency after a report it issued this week offered a scathing evaluation of Beijing's foreign policy and tactics in targeting critics.
In its annual report on Tuesday, Estonia's Foreign Intelligence Service accused China of using “strong-armed, underhanded” vaccine diplomacy during the pandemic, singling out individuals and entities that criticize the nation and collecting private email addresses in the Baltic nation.
“Being full of subjective assumptions, Cold War mentality and ideological prejudice, its contents concerning China has no factual basis at all,” the embassy in Tallinn said on its website, without identifying details of the report. “It maliciously speculates on China's goodwill and is completely irresponsible.”
The open spat is the second conflict between the Chinese government and a Baltic European Union member state.
In December, China began blocking Lithuanian products, as well as other EU goods containing Lithuanian components, after Taiwan opened a trade office in the capital, Vilnius. Beijing considered the move a challenge to its sovereignty, as the EU launched a case with the World Trade Organization.
Read more: U.S., Lithuania Agree to Address China's ‘Economic Coercion'
Estonia's intelligence estimate, most of which is devoted to Russia's military and political ambitions, included three sections on China. The spy agency detailed what it called China's coercive tactics in shipping its vaccine globally. It also assessed a more measured tone from Beijing, although Chinese officials took to identifying individual entities, such as newspaper editors and think tanks.
“When responding to criticism now, China addresses specific people or names them in its responses,” the intelligence report said. “The personalized response is expected to silence the author of the criticism and show that China's outrage has been provoked by a specific individual or group and is not directed against all foreigners.”
The report also analyzes China's relationship with Russia, which it calls a partnership of convenience that obscures an increasingly imbalanced power dynamic in which Beijing has the upper hand -- “a clever facade hiding the inequality and mutual distrust between the two superpowers,” the report says.
Read more: Putin and Xi Close Ranks Against the West on Ukraine and Taiwan
The Chinese embassy said it was “strongly dissatisfied” with the report.
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