President Donald Trump has given an order for “cold war” against the Chinese government by manipulating public opinion in China, Reuters reveals.

Specifically, the report states that Trump authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to launch a covert campaign on Chinese social media aimed at turning public opinion in China against its government, according to former US officials.

Three former officials told Reuters that the CIA created a small group that used fake online profiles to spread negative news about Xi Jinping’s government while leaking disparaging information to foreign news agencies. The effort, which began in 2019, has not been previously reported.

Over the past decade, China has rapidly expanded its global footprint, forging military alliances, trade deals and business partnerships with developing countries.

The CIA team advanced allegations that members of the ruling Communist Party were hiding illegal money abroad while calling the Chinese initiative corrupt and wasteful. Belt and Road, which provides financing for infrastructure projects in the developing world, the sources told Reuters.

Although U.S. officials declined to provide specific details about those operations, they said the disparaging claims were based on fact despite being secretly peddled by intelligence agents with fake profiles. The efforts inside China were intended to stoke tension among top leaders there, forcing its government to spend resources hunting down hackers on Beijing’s tightly controlled Internet, two former officials said. “We wanted them to hunt ghosts,” said one of those former officials.

Chelsea Robinson, a spokeswoman for the CIA, declined to comment on the program’s existence, goals or implications.
The CIA operation came in response to China’s long-running aggressive covert efforts aimed at increasing its global influence, the sources said. During his presidency, Trump has chosen a tougher response to China than his predecessors. The CIA campaign marked a return to the methods that marked Washington’s war with the former Soviet Union. “The Cold War is back,” said Tim Weiner, author of a book on the history of civil war.

Reuters was unable to determine the impact of the covert operations or whether President Joe Biden’s administration maintained the CIA program. Kate Waters, a spokeswoman for the Biden administration’s National Security Council, declined to comment on the program’s existence or whether it remains active. Two intelligence historians told Reuters that when the White House grants the CIA a covert operation authorization, through an order known as a presidential executive order, it often remains in effect across all administrations.

Trump, now the Republican presidential nominee, has suggested he will take an even tougher approach to China if he is re-elected president in November. Spokesmen for Trump and his former national security advisers John Bolton and Robert O’Brien, who both served at the time the order was issued, declined to comment.