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The government of China denied any election interference in the United States on Thursday night, shortly after President Donald Trump delivered a speech in which he announced that his administration would declassify intelligence documents about the integrity of American elections.
One of the major categories of documents being released, President Trump explained, was regarding the Chinese Communist Party’s attempts to influence American elections in the past decade. The documents indicated that the American intelligence community had obtained evidence of China amassing a massive trove of voter data. They also compiled evidence that Beijing was especially opposed to President Trump’s reelection prior to the 2020 election, allegedly fearing the unpredictability of Trump’s handling of the presidential office.
The Chinese embassy in Washington issued a statement to CBS News following the speech on Thursday — which also touched on other countries potentially compromising election integrity and voter trust in the results of elections — in which it denied any wrongdoing.
“China has all along adhered to the principle of non-interference in others’ internal affairs,” the statement reportedly read. “The U.S. election is an internal matter of the U.S. Its outcome is determined by the votes of the American people. China has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the U.S.”
The Chinese Communist Party has faced accusations of election meddling throughout the free world. In Canada, for example, the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) task force revealed in 2025 that it had identified “coordinated and malicious activity” by accounts linked to the Chinese government targeting the general election that resulted in the installation of Mark Carney, a longtime Chinese business partner, as prime minister. In Australia, a prominent senator was caught taking money from a Chinese regime-linked billionaire in 2017, preceding a sudden turn to advocacy for pro-Chinese talking points.
In the United States, President Trump claimed on Thursday, “the People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history — resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files.”
While his speech discussed various aspects of election integrity, including not just security breaches committed but existing vulnerabilities, the president highlighted China as an especially alarming threat to the American political system.
China’s documented breach of data in an estimated 18 states, Trump explained, granted it access to “sensitive data that would be needed to register to vote, and engage in other nefarious activities.”
“This data loss presents an unprecedented election security nightmare,” he observed. “The intelligence even shows that China assigned a data exploitation unit specifically to this new project.”
The president also highlighted a document, published by the White House, in which American intelligence indicates that the Chinese government opposed a second term for President Trump.
“They did not want and they just didn’t want it, they fought like hell not to have it, Donald Trump to win,” he said, stating that CIA documents recorded that China would “leverage all domestic and foreign elements that were opposed to the U.S. president in an effort to reduce the U.S. president’s votes and make him resign or lose the election.”
President Trump also noted that some documents indicate that, within the United States, “intelligence agencies worked to actively suppress and downplay information about the extent of China’s sinister election meddling.” He announced that he would be asking the leaders of America’s intelligence community and law enforcement apparatus to “investigate how and why such crucial info was hidden, to fire those involved in the cover-up and to press charges.”
English (US)