The Podesta "hack" was a spear phishing link, no? With the emails then published by Wikileaks?
What forensic evidence was published?
Afaicr, it was attributed on the basis of methods. Gmail didn't publicly disclose any internal logging.
And the email chain of custody is unreliable, so post-leak analysis has the can't-spot-a-perfect-forgery problem.
Fancy Bear and their software was analyzed by FireEye and Secureworks. You can judge for yourself whether you find the evidence persuasive:
https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/apt... https://www.secureworks.com/research/threat-group-4127-targe...
No such evidence has been published implicating the Chinese government.
NYT would of course never back erroneous allegations by US officials on geopolitical matters like these.