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Khushboo Razdan

US President Donald Trump launched a sharp attack on China late on Thursday (Washington time), accusing Beijing of interfering in US elections in a move that has strained a fragile thaw in ties and cast doubt on future high-level engagements.
In a prime-time address from the White House that lasted nearly 30 minutes, Trump accused China of orchestrating “what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history”.
He claimed Beijing stole 220 million US voter files, including names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences and other sensitive data. He also accused intelligence agencies of downplaying the scale of China’s “sinister” meddling.
On Friday, China’s foreign ministry dismissed Trump’s allegations as having “no factual ground”, saying Beijing adhered to the principle of non-intervention in other states’ internal affairs and had no interest in interfering in US elections.
Ministry spokesman Lin Jian urged Washington to reflect on its actions, stop its “unfounded smears” against China and “do more to benefit China-US relations”.
Trump’s claims of Chinese interference in US elections are not new – he made similar assertions in 2018 and 2020 – but the latest were his most sweeping and pointed yet. The national address barely touched on other issues such as the Iran war.
He also alleged that the Chinese government was seeking to turn US business leaders against him and paying US journalists “large sums of money” to write negative articles.
“China and other countries have been trying to meddle in our elections. Evidence of fraud has been buried,” he said.
Trump’s speech comes as his administration braces for the November midterm elections amid waning popularity, driven in part by the US-Israel war on Iran, which has pushed up the cost of living.
The fiery address also came two months after Trump’s May visit to China, when he and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to forge a “constructive relationship of strategic stability” to manage the rivalry between the powers.
That thaw might now be tested by Trump’s latest speech, which risks derailing high-level engagements between the two leaders, including Xi’s trip to the US in September, the first state visit by a Chinese leader in more than 10 years.
Domestically, [Trump] benefits from portraying China as an implacable enemy. Internationally, he may need China to behave as a pragmatic intermediary
Hilton Root, international politics professor
Michael Kugelman, a resident senior fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank, said Trump had long taken an ambiguous approach to China, signalling at different times a preference for cooperation and competition.
“That has kept the relationship fraught, but relatively stable. But these new allegations could make Trump’s careful approach to relations with Beijing untenable,” he said.
“They’re explosive, and could provoke an angry response in Beijing that carries over into upcoming bilateral diplomacy.”
Tensions have simmered in recent weeks. The Pentagon added dozens of Chinese firms to a list of entities it says are linked to the Chinese military, prompting Beijing to respond by adding 10 American firms to its export control list. The US has also redeployed coastguard vessels from the Middle East to the South China Sea.
On Thursday, the White House tightened visa rules for foreign students, media personnel and exchange programme participants, including stricter limits on Chinese journalists.
In Beijing, officials are likely to recognise that Trump’s Thursday speech was driven by domestic politics, but there could still be cause for concern.
Zhao Minghao, a professor at Fudan University’s Institute of International Studies, said Trump’s interference claim clearly reflected that domestic political factors were exerting growing influence on US-China relations.
“China has reason to worry that Trump – facing unfavourable election prospects – might further intensify these sorts of attacks on China, including blaming Beijing for America’s economic difficulties … or accusing Beijing of other things,” Zhao said, adding that such attacks could have an impact on recovering US-China ties and cloud Xi’s Washington visit.
There was also a real strategic tension involving China, said Hilton Root, a professor of international politics at George Mason University in Virginia.
He said Washington was simultaneously accusing Beijing of the largest compromise of American election data while relying on its leverage over Tehran, creating friction that could “reduce Trump’s diplomatic space”.
“Domestically, [Trump] benefits from portraying China as an implacable enemy. Internationally, he may need China to behave as a pragmatic intermediary. Those two requirements pull in different directions,” Root said.
“Tonight’s speech was the announcement of a governing narrative. It did not establish that China changed votes or that the cited registrations changed an election outcome. It demonstrates how Trump intends to connect cyber threats, voter-roll disputes, intelligence-community distrust, immigration, media hostility and foreign conflict.”
In the US, Trump’s charged speech has drawn support from his Republican base but others have rejected his claims. The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (Capac), a group of 85 members of the US Congress, accused Trump of using conspiracy theories to justify his voting agenda.
Before Trump spoke, former vice-president Kamala Harris said the US leader would “peddle lies and conspiracy theories” about the 2020 election, adding that he was attempting to distract Americans from rising costs and the Iran conflict.


Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia, described Trump’s allegations about Chinese election interference as “totally bogus”.
“The fact is our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that China did not even try to change a single vote in the 2020 election,” he wrote on social media.
Trump and his allies had repeatedly cast China, not Russia, as the greatest foreign threat to the vote’s integrity in the run-up to the November 2020 presidential election.
At the time, Trump told Reuters he believed China would do “anything they can to have me lose this race” and that Beijing wanted Joe Biden, his Democratic opponent, to win the election to ease trade pressures.
Biden went on to win 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, along with a roughly 7-million-vote edge in the popular tally. But Trump refused to concede, alleging widespread fraud and foreign meddling, and has frequently pointed the finger at Beijing.
But a declassified Intelligence Community Assessment released in March 2021 concluded that it was Russia that ran an influence campaign to support Trump while China had weighed similar efforts but ultimately held back.
In 2018, Trump told a UN Security Council meeting that Beijing did not want him to win that year’s midterm elections because he was “the first president to ever challenge China on trade”.
“Regrettably, we found that China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election, coming up in November, against my administration,” he said.
Beijing issued a similar rebuttal then, urging the US to stop making “groundless accusations” against China and halt actions and rhetoric that harm bilateral relations.


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Donald Trump alleges Beijing stole 220 million voter files, in a prime-time speech potentially clouding Xi Jinping’s planned US visit


Donald Trump alleges Beijing stole 220 million voter files, in a prime-time speech potentially clouding Xi Jinping’s planned US visit.


China blasts ‘unfounded smears’ as Trump’s election claims threaten diplomatic thaw

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Donald Trump alleges Beijing stole 220 million voter files, in a prime-time speech potentially clouding Xi Jinping’s planned US visit

Donald Trump alleges Beijing stole 220 million voter files, in a prime-time speech potentially clouding Xi Jinping’s planned US visit