A recent article in the U.S. media revealed that the Chinese Communist Party has taken advantage of the global pandemic of the Chinese Communist virus (COVID-19) to try to use state funding and power to create a new global media landscape in order to carry out its false propaganda around the world. In response to this, Chinese Communist Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying recently inadvertently revealed that a Xinhua correspondent had been forced to return to China recently.
A recent report in the New York Times said that the Chinese Communist authorities are trying to create a new global news media landscape to replace the old one dominated by Western media, and are using Chinese money, power and perspective to instill the influence of Communist propaganda in the media of almost every country in the world.
The report also cites a report to be released by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) on December 12, stating that as the CCP pandemic spreads globally, the CCP is using its global media infrastructure to spread propaganda favorable to the regime and even to encourage the dissemination of disinformation. The report also exposed the Chinese Communist authorities’ crackdown on foreign journalists in China, criticizing their refusal to grant work visas to U.S. journalists.
At a regular press conference of the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday (11), a reporter from the China Review News Agency (CRNA), a major foreign media outlet registered in Hong Kong, specifically asked what China’s response was to the above-mentioned report by New Times.
Hua Chunying then responded to the question in accordance with a pre-written plan that had obviously been written in advance.
Hua Chunying first emphasized that “all countries should have their own voices” in the media field. Then, once again resorting to the clichés of the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda system, she began to accuse the U.S. of “abusing its hegemony in discourse” and “recklessly launching disinformation attacks” against China under the guise of “freedom”, as well as “putting the consciousness of the Chinese side at risk. “and “putting ideology above the principle of objectivity and truth”, etc. She then claimed that the Chinese actions criticized in the New Times report were “in no way influential, infiltrative or propagandistic” and stressed that “how the media operates will naturally be different” because of the differences in national systems.
Finally, in response to the New Times’ criticism of the CCP’s crackdown on foreign media and denial of visas to U.S. journalists, Hua launched a fierce counterattack, accusing the U.S. government of various sanctions against CCP media since 2018, including delaying and even denying press credentials, registering Chinese media in the U.S. as “foreign agents,” disguising the expulsion of 60 Chinese journalists in the U.S., and expelling them from the country. The U.S. government has also reduced the visa stay of all Chinese journalists in the U.S. to no more than 90 days.
In response to the U.S. government’s measures to restrict journalists from the official Chinese media in the U.S., Hua Chunying spouted “bitterness”. She claimed that the visa extension applications submitted by Xinhua News Agency and People’s Daily in the U.S. in early November last year have not yet been approved, and they have been forced to stop working since early February this year, “including the Xinhua News Agency reporters who were forced to return to China on May 1”; many other Chinese reporters often have difficulty waiting for visa extensions to be approved, but have to apply for the next round immediately. already must immediately apply for the next round of visa applications again.
In fact, the media war between the U.S. and China escalated in the spring and summer of 2020 as the number of confirmed and deadly cases of CCP pneumonia continued to soar in every U.S. state. It became increasingly clear to the then-ruling Trump administration that most of the Chinese media outlets in the United States were CCP-controlled “official media” that were not truly independent and free, but rather were the CCP government’s foreign propaganda apparatus, with highly overlapping functions with the CCP’s intelligence services, and that most of their Most of these “journalists” are also engaged in intelligence gathering.
In February 2020, the U.S. State Department issued a notice defining the U.S. branches of five official CCP media outlets – Xinhua News Agency, China International Television (CGTN), China Daily, China Radio International, and People’s Daily – as “foreign missions” and proposing corresponding restrictions based on the new characterization. Subsequently, the Chinese government expelled three Wall Street Journal reporters in retaliation.
On March 2 of the same year, the U.S. State Department ordered the five CCP propaganda organizations to reduce the number of their employees from 160 to 100, and required them to regularly report their employment and financial information to the U.S. government. The Communist Party then retaliated by requiring five U.S. media outlets to declare their personnel and financial information and to return their U.S. press credentials, which were due to expire by the end of the year.
On May 8 of the same year, in an effort to provide greater protection for U.S. national security, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued new visa rules that limited the visas for journalists from CCP propaganda organizations in the United States to 90 days, with an option to extend.
Previously, such U.S. visas typically had no duration limit and did not require extensions unless the journalist changed employers or media outlets in which he or she worked. However, visas issued to U.S. media reporters are limited to one year, and in an effort to suppress freedom of reporting, the CCP has continually shortened the validity of visas, with some foreign media reporters receiving visas valid for as little as six or three months, or even one month. The CCP also frequently restricts foreign journalists by denying visas and delaying visa renewals.
On June 22 last year, the U.S. Department of State again announced the addition of four other CCP propaganda organizations to the list of “foreign missions,” bringing the number of official CCP media outlets in the U.S. qualified as “foreign missions” to nine, all of which are subject to the aforementioned announced measures. These organizations are subject to the previously announced measures. The State Department has emphasized that these organizations are controlled by the CCP government and are not normal news media.
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