No research shows Chinese propaganda or disinformation playing a pivotal role in the midterm elections, particularly when compared to Russia’s aggressive attempts. Yet significant blind spots exist. If it desired, Beijing is well-positioned to shape political debate through the WeChat app and through Chinese AI models.
Rather than shifting control of Congress, Beijing’s goal would likely be to reduce the presence of known Communist Party critics, particularly those serving in the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Created by Congress in October 2000, the Commission monitors Chinese human rights and rule of law.
Several competitive races feature Commission members, including former Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio and current Commission Chair Dan Sullivan in Alaska. House races in Iowa and Virginia involve current Commission members Zach Nunn and Jen Kiggans. Ashley Hinson, who is running for the Senate in Iowa, is on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, another Congressional body critical of the regime.
Texas looks particularly sensitive for a different reason. WeChat, a messaging and multi-function app, has an estimated 1.5 million US users, concentrated in states with large Chinese American populations. Chinese Americans make up roughly one percent of Texas’s population.
Chinese state-sponsored censorship on WeChat is well-documented. A 2025 University of Texas study based on interviews with 20 Chinese Americans in Texas detailed how political misinformation circulates on the platform. One young interviewee described how her father read that an Asian American woman had been elected mayor of Boston months before the actual election.
“He just accepts everything he reads, and then he just forwards it,” she said. “My mother-in-law, too.”
Cultural and social pressures reduce willingness to correct misinformation in family or friend groups. “It doesn’t feel right for me to talk bad to my elders, especially in the group chat setting,” a 19-year-old Chinese American explained.
In this environment, the app is powerful. “A lot of people don’t know who to vote for, so they are easily swayed,” another interviewee commented. “It is a big political platform, and a lot of people will just blindly follow.”
The 2026 elections are the first to take place in an environment where AI chatbots are widely available. About one-fifth of Americans plan to use AI tools to help learn about candidates or inform voting decisions, according to a recent survey. Most will turn to American models such as ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, or Perplexity, but many US developers are increasingly relying on Chinese-origin models such as DeepSeek and Qwen, allowing them to enter the US information environment.
These models reflect the Chinese government’s official stances on domestic politics and human rights. Censorship and propaganda have also been found in responses to questions about US press freedom and elections.
One study examined Chinese AI models’ responses to questions about the upcoming US elections. Conducted by a research group based in Europe, researchers tested seven AI models (five US and two Chinese) with a set of 20 polling-style questions.
All models proved relatively consistent and offered mixed results in terms of partisan preferences. The two Chinese models did not diverge sharply from their US counterparts in their responses. DeepSeek, for example, selected the Democratic option on two questions about which party’s candidate it would select for Congress and which party it prefers to control Congress. So did Claude and Perplexity (99% on one of the questions). By contrast, Qwen chose Democrats 55% and 75% of the time, respectively.
The results are striking for what they show about the leeway allowed the Chinese models to comment on US versus Chinese politics. DeepSeek offered critical assessments of the US president’s job performance. Asking the same questions about Chinese President Xi Jinping would almost certainly produce refusals or strictly glowing reviews.
Major holes remain in our understanding of where and how Chinese Communist Party-linked electoral influence could be occurring. Researchers, election monitors, and others focused on election integrity should address these gaps — particularly before the 2028 elections.
Sarah Cook is founder of China Rights Analytics and Advising LLC and author of the UnderReported China newsletter.
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