Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian. Photo: China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs

 
Blaming Russia, Iran and China for "shaping" US elections serves as Washington's tactic to divert attention from the chaos of its presidential election to outside imaginary enemies, said Chinese experts, after US officials accused the three countries of recruiting Americans to spread propaganda to advance their interests ahead of the US presidential election.

Some US citizens have been knowingly helping foreign governments "seed, promote and add credibility to narratives that serve the foreign actors' interests," the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Monday in its latest update on election security. 

Others in the US have been duped into aiding the foreign actors, according to the report.
The report claimed that Russia has been making efforts to build and use networks of US and Western "personalities" to create and disseminate Russian-friendly narratives."

Similarly, the Chinese government has collaborated with a China-based technology company to enhance its "covert influence operations, including to more efficiently create content that connects with local audiences," anonymous officials at the Office of US National Director of Intelligence were quoted by Bloomberg as saying.

They declined to name the company involved.

In response, Lin Jian, a spokesperson from China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday that China has never and will never interfere with US elections. "We firmly oppose US disseminating false information to smear China and make China an issue in US elections."

The Kremlin on Tuesday dismissed as absurd US intelligence assertions that Russia is seeking to meddle in the presidential election and said that US spies were intent on casting Russia as an enemy, Reuters reported. 

"As for these accusations, they are absurd, and we strongly reject them," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked about the reports from Washington.

"There will be a lot of such statements as the US elections approach because Russia and the head of the Russian state personally are essentially significant factors that both Republicans and Democrats exploit during their political struggle, especially in the election campaign," said Peskov.

The recent smear campaigns against China, Russia and Iran for allegedly interfering with the US election are tactics used by Washington to treat internal problems by blaming external forces, Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Tuesday. 

By shifting the blame for the chaos in its own elections onto external parties, it implies that US political elites have no genuine intention of addressing their domestic issues. Instead, they hope to divert attention by creating animosity toward other countries, Li said. 

"We will definitely not interfere with the internal affairs of this country [US]," Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev told Russian news agency Tass on Sunday. 

Bloomberg cited US officials as saying that although China does not seek to influence the outcome of the presidential election, there is the possibility that Beijing-related actors may try to denigrate down-ballot candidates seen as threatening to China's core interests. 
China has made it clear that no matter which candidate sits in the Oval Office, its policy regarding China will continue to be unfriendly and antagonistic, said Li, noting that overhyping the China factor during the US election is an attempt by American officials to provoke an unfriendly consensus among the public toward China.

Continually recklessly smearing China will only make US policy toward China less rational and more emotional, ideological and extreme, posing obstacles to broader China-US cooperation on various issues, Li noted.