China Defends Expulsion of American Journalists, Accusing U.S. of Prejudice

On Tuesday, China went even further, requiring all American journalists for the three newspapers whose credentials expire by the end of the year to turn in their press cards within 10 days. It said they would not be allowed to continue working as journalists in China.

In an unusual move, it said the Americans were also forbidden from working as journalists in Macau or Hong Kong, two semiautonomous Chinese territories that have traditionally had greater protections for press freedom than the mainland.

The American news outlets criticized the Chinese government’s decision. On Wednesday, American officials were discussing what measures to take in response, including further retaliatory actions against official Chinese interests in the United States. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday called the expulsions “unfortunate” and said he hoped China would reconsider.

Mr. Pompeo maintained there was a fundamental difference between the expelled American reporters, who are employed by independent media outlets, and the expelled Chinese journalists, who work for a state propaganda machine.

In its official rhetoric, the Chinese government has cast its decision as a matter of diplomacy. But its own comments and reports in state-run news outlets indicated that Beijing, which often accuses the Western media of bias, also takes issue with the three American news outlets’ reporting on China.

“We reject ideological bias against China, reject fake news made in the name of press freedom, reject breaches of ethics in journalism,” tweeted Hua Chunying, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman.

An article from The Global Times, a stridently nationalistic tabloid controlled by the party, criticized the The New York Times’s coverage of the coronavirus outbreak, the monthslong antigovernment protests in Hong Kong, and the Chinese authorities’ internment of ethnic-minority Muslims in far western Xinjiang. The paper’s coverage of the epidemic, the article said, was “aiming to attack China’s political system and smear China’s efforts” to contain the virus.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/world/asia/china-expels-journalists.html