The Chinese government claimed it didn’t care about the outcome of the U.S. midterm elections and that it believed the vote outcome should be decided by Americans following the FBI’s contention that Beijing ramped up its election influence efforts in 2022.
The FBI and cybersecurity experts recently agreed that China was getting more aggressive with its influence campaigns in the United States, including the Chinese government’s targeting of the midterm elections, which China denies.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian was asked about the U.S. midterm elections on Tuesday and if the Chinese government had a comment on the results, and he said China didn’t have a stance on it. “I won’t comment on this, as the U.S. midterm elections are its internal affairs, and the election results are to be decided by the U.S. voters,” he contended.
CHINA INCREASED INFLUENCE EFFORTS AHEAD OF MIDTERMS, FBI SAYS
The intelligence community concluded Russia worked to hurt now-President Joe Biden and that Iran worked to undermine then-President Donald Trump in 2020, but there was disagreement within spy agencies about whether China sat on the sidelines or took steps to harm Trump’s reelection. The FBI now says China ramped up its election influence efforts in 2022.
An unclassified intelligence advisory sent to state and local officials in mid-September reportedly said Beijing was likely attempting to influence certain races in an effort to “hinder candidates perceived to be particularly adversarial to Beijing.”
The bureau conducted a briefing last month in which the FBI discussed China, Russia, and Iran as the three main foreign election threats.
The FBI repeatedly pointed to a Justice Department indictment in March in which prosecutors accused Chinese intelligence of attempting to undermine the congressional candidacy of Xiong Yan, a former Tiananmen Square protest leader-turned-retired U.S. Army chaplain, in a criminal harassment and intimidation scheme.
“That is a shift from what we’ve seen historically on the China side,” a senior FBI official said. “What we assess there, honestly, is that there are a subset of candidates that hit both the thresholds that really frustrates China regarding dissident perspectives and Beijing policy perspectives, and then the broader Chinese influence narratives and efforts which are generally to undermine … U.S. criticism of Beijing and its policies.”
The cybersecurity firm Mandiant also released a report last month on a Chinese influence campaign dubbed “Dragonbridge” the outlet said it can “assess with high confidence to be operating in support of the political interests of the People’s Republic of China, aggressively targeting the United States by seeking to sow division both between the U.S. and its allies and within the U.S. political system itself.”
The firm said Dragonbridge’s recent narratives include “aggressive attempts to discredit the U.S. democratic process, including attempts to discourage Americans from voting” in the midterm elections.
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly declared Wednesday that “we can all have confidence in the safety, security, and integrity of our elections” and that CISA had observed “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was any way compromised in any race in the country.”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence report released in March 2021 said that “we assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the U.S. presidential election” in 2020.
But the report also indicated that a minority view from the national intelligence officer for cyber “assesses, however, that China did take some steps to undermine former President Trump’s reelection.”
China made similar denials about meddling in Canada’s elections following a report last week by Canadian outlet Global News, which reported that “Canadian intelligence officials have warned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that China has allegedly been targeting Canada with a vast campaign of foreign interference, which includes funding a clandestine network of at least 11 federal candidates running in the 2019 election.”
“We have taken significant measures to strengthen the integrity of our elections processes and our systems, and will continue to invest in the fight against election interference, against foreign interference of our democracies and institutions,” Trudeau said Monday, according to the BBC. “Unfortunately, we’re seeing countries, state actors from around the world, whether it’s China or others, are continuing to play aggressive games with our institutions, with our democracies.”
Zhao Lijian said Wednesday in response, “Relations between countries can only be built on the basis of mutual respect, equality, and mutual benefit. China-Canada relations are no exception. The Canadian side should stop making remarks that would harm bilateral relations. We have no interest in Canada’s internal affairs.”
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The Chinese official was also asked Tuesday for his thoughts on China-U.S. relations following the 2022 midterm elections.
“Our position is consistent and clear. We believe that a sound and steady China-U.S. relationship serves the fundamental interests of the two peoples. It is also the common aspiration of the international community,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry official said. “We hope the U.S. will work with China to find the right way for our two countries to get along with each other.”
House Republicans have promised to crack down on China if they win the majority.
