Statement: China has "not acted so well with our elections. They've tampered with our elections quite a bit.
Speaker: jeff denham
About the speaker: Jeff Denham is the U.S. Representative for California's 10th congressional district in the state's Central Valley. He is a Republican. 
Date: July 24, 2018
Location: california
Topics: corrections and updates;elections;foreign policy
Context: a podcast interview
Fact-check justification: Congressman Jeff Denham recently claimed China has "tampered with our elections quite a bit." Last year, PolitiFact Wisconsin surveyed a dozen international affairs experts to examine a similar  and found no  China has conducted widespread election interference. It found one case in 1996 of illegal campaign contributions by a Taiwanese-born California businessman to Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign. The example, however, was not part of a sustained, pervasive election interference. Experts said they consider it an example of buying influence, but not comprehensive election tampering. We reached four experts to ask whether any information over the past year had changed their assessment. They told us there’s still nothing to support the charge that China has "tampered with our elections quite a bit." They added that China, like many countries, does attempt to influence America’s political process, mainly through lobbying, but does not have a record of election meddling anywhere approaching Russia’s. We rate Denham’s  .    –  The statement is not accurate. Click here for  more  on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. UPDATE:  After we published our fact check, Denham’s office provided additional news reports, contending "there is significantly more of a case" for the congressman’s  than we showed in our fact check. The articles, which center on China’s alleged hacking of the Obama and McCain presidential campaigns in 2008, were not part of the congressman’s initial response. But we reviewed them and consulted several experts on China to evaluate whether they, in fact, make more of a case for Denham’s statement. Denham’s office pointed mainly to an NBC News investigation published in June 2013. It quoted Dennis Blair, President Obama’s director of national intelligence in 2009 and 2010, as saying: "Based on everything I know, this was a case of political cyberespionage by the Chinese government against the two American political parties. They were looking for positions on China, surprises that might be rolled out by campaigns against China." The NBC report added: "The goal of the campaign intrusion, according to (U.S. Intelligence) officials: to export massive amounts of internal data from both campaigns—including internal position papers and private emails of key advisers in both camps." Robert Ross of the Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University told us in an email the 2008 hacking case "does not show  of tampering in elections, but rather of an espionage campaign aimed at collecting intelligence on the likely US policies of US presidential candidates." "In this respect," he added, "it is no different from any other intelligence collection effort. This was not tampering, but rather collection. There is a difference between such operations that must not be overlooked." Ross said the difference is that tampering aims to influence political outcomes in the United States, while intelligence collection "aims to improve the foreign policies of the state collecting the intelligence." Additional experts said even if the 2008 case was considered "tampering," they would still take issue with Denham’s characterization of China tampering with U.S. elections "quite a bit." "Folks from the government may know more, but I have not seen any pervasive patterns," wrote Victor Shih, associate professor at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at UC San Diego. The additional information from Denham’s office supports the idea that China has conducted widespread intelligence collection to influence America’s political process. But that’s not the same as tampering, which we and the experts we spoke with interpreted as attempting to alter election results, such as Russia’s effort in 2016. Even if it did fit that category, it would not be "quite a bit." Our rating on Denham’s  remains the same: .