Trump authorized covert CIA operation in 2019 to spread negative stories on Chinese social media including that Communist Party officials were storing ill-gotten gains overseas

Former President Donald Trump directed the CIA in 2019 to spread damaging stories about the Chinese Communist Party on Chinese social media to turn public opinion against them, according to former US officials.

This was reported by three former officials with direct knowledge of the classified CIA operation Reuters that a team was established to spread these stories on Chinese social media.

The small team used fake online identities to push negative narratives about Xi Jinping’s government on the heavily regulated Chinese internet – which famously censors the publication and display of certain material.

Members of the CIA team elaborated on allegations that the country’s Belt and Road Initiative – which funds foreign infrastructure projects in developing countries – was wasteful and corrupt.

The team also traded stories of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials keeping suspicious amounts of money in overseas bank accounts, despite the country’s strict laws surrounding international money transfers.

Some of the stories posted to Chinese social media accused top CCP officials of keeping ill-gotten gains in overseas bank accounts

The program was overseen by the CIA and began in 2019, according to the former officials

The officials did not provide further details on how the operations were carried out, but admitted that the negative stories they circulated were based in fact.

The mission was intended to cause paranoia among the CCP leadership.

Another goal of the mission was to force the CCP to spend valuable resources investigating how dissent was distributed on the heavily regulated Chinese Internet in the first place.

“We wanted them to hunt ghosts,” said one of the officials.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said the revelation reveals that US officials are using ‘public opinion spaces and media platforms as weapons to spread false information and manipulate international public opinion’.

The covert effort came in response to years of China’s own aggressive intelligence and global influence operations, according to the officials.

However, China’s Foreign Ministry said Beijing adheres to a “principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries and does not interfere in the internal affairs of the United States.”

The CIA operations also targeted public opinion in countries outside of China, according to the former officials.

Missions targeted public sentiment in Southeast Asia, Africa and the South Pacific, where many of China’s Belt and Road initiatives took place.

The CIA operation sought to sway public opinion in China and surrounding regions against the CCP leadership

“The feeling was that China was coming at us with steel baseball bats and we were fighting back with wooden clubs,” said one former national security official.

Matt Pottinger, who was a senior National Security Council official at the time, engineered the authorization behind the operation, three former officials said.

This authorization cited allegations of CCP theft of intellectual property and military expansion as threats to US national security.

However, Pottinger did not comment on the “accuracy or inaccuracy of claims about US intelligence activities.”