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By Bloomberg

China’s stock market plunge was engineered by hostile forces determined to derail the country’s reforms and overthrow the Communist Party, the chairman of state-owned Aviation Industry Corp. of China said in a newspaper interview.

Lin Zuoming, who oversees the aviation conglomerate and also sits on the party’s 205-member Central Committee, said China is “without any doubt” facing an economic war, according to an article in China Aviation News published Sunday. He didn’t name those he believed responsible for the rout that saw the market lose almost $4 trillion in value from its June 12 peak.

AVIC, which makes fighter jets for the Chinese military, controls at least 20 listed companies in the A-shares market, including AVIC Heavy Machinery Co. and AVIC Aircraft Co., Lin said. The company “prepared billions of yuan” to buy its own stocks and encouraged its own employees to buy stocks, he told the newspaper.

Lin said the hostile forces especially manipulated the market to humiliate the government on June 18, when Hong Kong lawmakers rejected a Beijing-backed plan for political reform, and June 29, the day of a signing ceremony to create the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

The Shanghai Composite Index closed down 3.7 percent and 3.3 percent on those days, though it fell more on other days, including June 26 when it plunged 7.4 percent. Government measures including a $483 billion credit line to China Securities Finance Corp. have since arrested the slide.