On Thursday, February 11, the British Foreign Secretary commented on the matter after China’s State Administration of Radio and Television (SARFT) announced that BBC World News did not meet the conditions for landing an overseas channel and decided not to allow its World News Channel to remain in China, and that its application to land for a new year would not be accepted.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said, “China’s decision to ban BBC World News on the mainland is an unacceptable curtailment of media freedom. China’s restrictions on media and online freedom are among the toughest in the world and this latest move will only damage China’s image in the eyes of the world”.
Tom Tugenhardt, a British lawyer with a hawkish stance on China, was quoted by AFP as saying that “China’s move against the BBC is regrettable but not surprising at all” and that “the matter is, to a large extent, a tit-for-tat retaliatory move, but the environment for journalism in China But the deteriorating environment for journalism in China is a matter of concern to all of us. He also noted that “the increasingly aggressive posture of the Chinese Communist Party toward foreign media, while promoting its own state media globally, deserves further scrutiny. Tom Tugenhardt is one of the leaders of the British MPs’ China Study Group and chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.
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