BEIJING — China is flatly denying President Trump’s accusation that it is interfering in November’s midterm elections, implying that it is the United States that has a track record of meddling in other countries’ business.

With an acrimonious trade dispute rumbling on and amid an increasingly fractious security environment, the latest tit-for-tat could worsen the relationship between the world’s two largest economies.

“I believe the international community knows very well who is most used to meddling in the internal affairs of others,” Geng Shuang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told reporters Thursday. He did not name the United States directly but was responding to a question about Trump’s assertion Wednesday at the United Nations that Beijing was trying to influence the midterms.

“They do not want me or us to win because I am the first president to ever challenge China on trade,” Trump said at a U.N. Security Council meeting, “and we are winning on trade – we are winning on every level.”

But the president and his top aides offered no evidence to support the contention that China was meddling.

Trump’s ire appeared sparked by a four-page supplement that the China Daily, an English-language publication owned by the Chinese government, bought in the Des Moines Register on Sunday.

Asked about the newspaper ads, Geng said the idea that they amounted to election interference was “totally far-fetched and fictional.”

“We advise the U.S. side to stop its unwarranted accusations and slander against China and refrain from wrong words and deeds that might hurt our bilateral relations and fundamental interests,” he said.

The Des Moines Register pages were laid out newspaper-style, with a note labeling them as a China Daily supplement.

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