US Vice President Mike Pence Accuses China Of Interfering In Upcoming Elections

US Vice President Mike Pence accused China of meddling in the upcoming American elections to seek a change of power in the White House.

“To put it bluntly, President Trump’s leadership is working; China wants a different American president,” Pence said in a major foreign policy speech at the Hudson Institute, reported The Times of India. “There can be no doubt- China is meddling in America’s democracy.”

Pence added that China is resorting to proactive and coercive ways in order to interfere in the domestic policies and politics of the United States. He went on to cast China as a greater threat to election security than Russia.

Pence also accused Beijing of using debt diplomacy to expand its influence in the world by way of offering infrastructure loans worth hundreds of billions of dollars to governments from Asia to Africa to Europe to Latin America. He gave an example of a Sri Lankan port which he said could soon become a forward military base for Beijing’s navy.

In response, China straightaway rejected the allegations of election interference calling it “completely ridiculous.”

“We have no interest in interfering in the internal affairs and elections of the United States,” the Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said. “The international community sees very clearly, in fact, which country is the one that invades the sovereignty of other countries, interferes in other countries’ internal affairs, and damages the interests of other countries.”

Hua called on the US to cease accusing and slandering China and harming the country’s interests, and China-US ties and to take immediate action in order to improve relations between the two countries.

Meanwhile, the US President Donald Trump has warned to impose tariffs on an additional $267 billion Chinese goods and asserted that there will be no deal with Beijing unless it changes its unfair trade practices.