China's foreign ministry on Thursday (March 6) firmly opposed the United States' "unreasonable accusations" and demanded an immediate halt to what it described as the U.S.'s "wrong practice of abusing sanctions."

"As the world's largest "hacker empire", the U.S.'s related practices are hypocritical double standards and a typical case of a thief crying 'stop the thief’,” said Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs during a regular press event.

The U.S. on Wednesday announced indictments against a slew of alleged Chinese hackers, sanctioned a Chinese tech company and offered a $10 million bounty over what Washington called a years-long spy campaign that stole information from victims across America and around the world.

Federal officials accused 10 people of collaborating to steal data from their targets. Eight of the suspects worked for the company known as Anxun Information Technology, better known as i-Soon, and two worked for the Chinese Ministry of Public Security.