Editor's note: Hannan Hussain is a foreign affairs commentator and author. He is a Fulbright recipient at the University of Maryland (U.S.) and a former assistant researcher at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

On October 26, Newsweek released its four-month investigation into China's alleged "campaign of influence and interference" within the United States. The report claims to have identified 600 government-aligned groups that are used to manipulate U.S. public opinion, conduct economic espionage, and steer election developments to Beijing's apparent advantage.

"The Communist Party of China (CPC) and other government-linked entities have been working, through multiple channels in the U.S. at the federal, state and local level, to foster conditions and connections that will further Beijing's political and economic interests and ambitions," alleges the report. The blatant attacks, devoid of both fact and consistency, are nothing but an attempt to veer away from the fundamental truth that the threat to U.S. democracy is inherently internal.

The report erroneously suggests that 600 identified groups in the U.S. are all in "regular touch with and guided by CPC," offering hypothetical examples of international espionage as its concrete evidence. To further expose this discord, the report taps individually conducted interviews with U.S. government officials and controversial analysts, some of which are linked to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (APSI), a think-tank with a demonstrated anti-China bend.

"The political goal of the China is to denigrate the standing of the U.S.," states a quoted analysis in the report. But the basis for Beijing's alleged "cross-platform inauthentic activity," and the wild speculation about China's penetration into American universities, think-tanks, and cultural groups, is comprehensively unsubstantiated in the politically motivated observations.

As early as August, American intelligence and law enforcement agencies cast a skeptical glance on foreign state interference in the U.S. elections. Reuters reported that one U.S. federal security official had clarified that U.S. agencies "have not seen to date any coordinated voter-fraud effort" by a foreign power or anyone else ahead of the election. 

This debunks Newsweek's accusation that China's so-called election interference efforts have capitalized on middle ground between institutional processes and voter outcomes. In fact, the report points to the same intelligence community to push a contrarian spin on Beijing.

In a more bizarre instance, an anonymous U.S. "official" is quoted by the paper to sell the claim that a U.S. governor – with investments in China – could end up influencing policy in Washington on behalf of Beijing. This fictitious claim marks a comical divergence from the report's earlier narrative, which suggested that U.S. governors and lawmakers are resistant to such influence.

A broad range of contradictions also surround Beijing's alleged influence-building campaigns for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The report claims that Chinese leaders "have a favorite in the race," pointing to anonymous members within Biden's ranks that appear potentially less willing to "challenge China quite as deeply as President Trump, if they win."

As evident from both lines of argument, the investigation simply invents Beijing's complicity by pitting party differences in the U.S. against each other, hoping that the underlying conjecture passes as proof.

More importantly, the report establishes a very strong case for its own partisan appeal to Trump's election prospects, arguing that Beijing's "negative rhetoric about the Trump administration" – legitimate sovereign positions on Hong Kong, TikTok and COVID-19 conspiracies – is an implicit indication of its interference intent.

By that logic, China – and other sovereign powers – should immediately relinquish their legitimate opposition to the Trump administration's accusation-heavy rhetoric, and divorce their worldview from factual inquiry. Also, the Newsweek investigation's implicit defense of the Trump presidency turns concrete when it proudly endorses U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as one of the "thorns in the CPC's side" for making U.S. foreign policy advantageous through a "broad pushback against China."

Having manipulated the context of a Global Times story on the U.S. elections and blasting China's United Front as a coercive framework for influence and interference, the investigation also claims to unearth over six dozen United Front-affiliated entities in the States. According to the report, the operations of these groups border on "outright espionage."

It counts Chinese hometown associations for immigrants, several aid centers, Chinese-language media brands, cross-Strait peace initiatives, and hundreds of Chinese Student and Scholar Associations as part of its imaginary state-backed interference network.

In a sign of shifting goalposts, the report also insists on a credible methodology for identifying the alleged influence-building entities. It mentions crossover membership, and the crosschecking of "names, positions and cooperative events described in hundreds of Chinese-language government and party documents."

Testifying to the blatant inaccuracies of the misleading investigation is that very last bit. For an investigation that spends its crux accusing the CPC of trying to subvert the U.S. "from within," it is compromising to see the same report endorse party outputs to legitimize its fabricated assessments.

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