BEIJING: China announced early Wednesday that it would take countermeasures against restrictive measures on Chinese media agencies in the US, effective immediately.
As a standard and common practice in the diplomacy domain, the move is a decisive response to the Trump administration’s unwarranted suppression and discriminatory practices against Chinese journalists, which also reflects Beijing’s outrage over biased coverage of US media since the novel coronavirus outbreak, especially the racist and false reporting that intentionally smears China, analysts said.
In response to the US designation of five Chinese media agencies as “foreign missions,” China demands, in the spirit of reciprocity, that the China-based branches of Voice of America, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and Time declare in written form information about their staff, finance, operation and real estate in China, the Chinese foreign ministry said in a public statement.
When it comes to US slashing the staff size of Chinese media outlets in the country, China demands that journalists of US citizenship working with the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post whose press credentials are due to expire before the end of 2020 notify the Department of Information of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs within four calendar days starting from Wednesday and hand back their press cards within ten calendar days.
They will not be allowed to continue working as journalists in China, including its Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions.
Also, in response to the discriminatory restrictions, the US has imposed on Chinese journalists with regard to visa, administrative review and reporting, China will take reciprocal measures against American journalists, the ministry said. “Country-to-country relations are based on reciprocity. If the US imposes discriminatory policies against Chinese media in the US, we’ll play by the American rules of the game,” Shen Yi, an expert from Fudan University, told the Global Times on Wednesday. And listing these five news outlets is because of their biased coverage on China which is purely ideologically driven, he said, noting that those five, as the liberal publications, always prioritize their political tendencies. “China’s countermeasures sent a clear signal that China does not require anyone or any institution to accept its ideology. But if they pretend to be ‘asleep’ and continue to bombard people with fake news and lies, China is left with no choice but to take actions,” Shen said.
The Wall Street Journal called “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia” in an opinion article published on February 3, revealing the newspaper’s deep-seated racial discrimination, which is a clear contradiction of the values of freedom and equality promoted by the US, according to observers.
– The Daily Mail-Global Times News exchange item
