Former ABC China Correspondent Bill Birtles Interviewed by Voice of America via Skype
Former ABC China correspondent Bill Birtles has had a stormy year in 2020.
In early January, he was in Taiwan covering the election, and at the end of the month, he rushed to Wuhan to cover the Communist virus outbreak; just hours after arriving, the city was declared closed.
In the months that followed, he witnessed the largest expulsion of foreign journalists since the Mao era, when several American journalists were forced to leave China, and in August, Australian journalist Cheng Lei of China’s state-run television station was arrested on “suspicion of engaging in criminal activities that endanger China’s national security.
A few weeks later, he himself was in the news: a midnight visit by seven Chinese state security police, 120 hours of “hostage diplomacy,” and a frightening emergency evacuation. Five years as a journalist in China came to an abrupt end.
Sitting in his familiar home in Sydney in December, the climate is pleasant and quiet as ever, and Bottus is almost uncomfortable with the slow pace of the city. Looking back on an eventful year, he says he’s been lucky.
“I’m back home, I’m in Australia, I’m fine, but there are a lot of people in the Chinese media field who have been affected this year,” he told Voice of America via Skype in Chinese. “I’m home safely, but a few journalists I know, they’ve been expelled.”
Relations between Beijing and Washington have deteriorated significantly this year, with media reporters from both countries embroiled in an escalating political tug-of-war between major powers.
In February, the Trump administration announced that it was classifying five official Communist Party media outlets in the United States, including Xinhua News Agency, as foreign missions and limiting the number of Chinese nationals working in the U.S. at those five outlets to 100. China then announced countermeasures, requiring the five U.S. media outlets in China, including the Voice of America, to declare their personnel and assets, and expelling U.S. journalists from three major U.S. newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
Bottus believes that his own forced and hasty departure cannot be separated from the broader geopolitical context. The past few months have seen an unprecedented deterioration in Sino-Australian relations. In late June, Australian authorities launched an investigation into four journalists from Chinese official media in Australia for allegedly violating the Anti-Foreign Interference Act. The details of these investigations are not yet known.
According to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, 17 foreign journalists have been directly or indirectly expelled from China in the first half of this year alone. The departure of Bottus and another Australian journalist marks the first time since the 1970s that Australia has been without a correspondent in China.
Despite the lack of hard evidence, Bottus said foreign media reporters in China have believed for years that their WeChat and cell phones were being monitored.
He said, “There have been times when we’ve used WeChat to set up an interview, and the person being interviewed might have state security, or local police go to their home, go to their office and say, I know you’re getting ready to do an interview with the Australian media. We advise you not to do that. How do they know that? It must have been monitored.”
When Bottus first came to Beijing in 2015, it was still possible to access the Australian broadcaster’s website in China. one day in 2018, the website was suddenly blocked. The Internet Information Office did not explain why, but simply told them that you know what mistakes you have made and you must correct them. He speculated that this might be related to the fact that AusBroadcast had produced in-depth investigative reports about disclosures of Chinese Communist Party infiltration and interference overseas.
It has become increasingly difficult to find interviewees in China, and some scholars within the system who were once outspoken are now afraid to express their views publicly. The very few scholars who are willing to be interviewed by the foreign media are saying the same thing as the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
“All sides are one voice. In recent years, China has become more ideologically homogeneous under Xi Jinping,” Bottus said.
In addition to pressure from officials, nationalist and xenophobic sentiment has increased among Chinese citizens. When he interviewed people on the streets of Shenzhen last year about what they thought of the Hong Kong protests, a 90-year-old boy told him directly, “I don’t want to be interviewed by you guys, you just want to smear China.”
Such words are often heard by Bottus, but what he didn’t expect was that this time the youngster got two police officers nearby to report the presence of foreign media reporters.
“I think there’s a lot of very red patriotic concepts among young people in China right now, and you see young people like that all the time on the Internet. On the road, in Beijing, in Shanghai, we also meet a lot of these young people,” Bottus told Voice of America.
More than the plight of foreign journalists, Bottus said he is concerned about Chinese employees who work for foreign media outlets.
“The current climate is really unfortunate for them, there’s so much pressure,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot of stories where the police might say to these Chinese employees, remember you’re Chinese, you have to listen to us, you’re not a foreign journalist, you don’t have a foreign passport.”
The interview comes shortly after Haze Fan, a Chinese female reporter for Bloomberg News’ Beijing bureau, was arrested by police on suspicion of endangering national security. A few days later, former New York Times photojournalist and documentary filmmaker Du Bin was arrested on charges of provocation and harassment. In March, Chinese Communist Party officials forced at least six Chinese employees working for U.S. media outlets to sign “voluntary” termination agreements.
A Chinese news assistant in Beijing, who has long been employed by a foreign media organization, told VOA that Chinese employees of foreign media have always had a hard time, and the last two years have been particularly difficult, with harassment and “tea” by police a common occurrence. For security reasons, she asked to keep her name and workplace anonymous.
“I’m not alone, I know people have had, a very common phenomenon it. People are probably used to it now,” she said.
She was tricked into going out for her first “tea”. The national security guards pretended to be her landlord and tricked her into going to a designated location for hours of questioning to find out what they were covering and what their next plans were. The police also tried to find out the preferences of foreign journalists, hoping to keep track of their movements.
This “tea” went on for years, during which time the National Security Service also threatened her parents. I was angry, “What are my parents doing, why are you involving them? I thought it was a despicable act,” she said.
She later learned that many of her peers had had similar experiences. The last time she finally relented and, with great impatience, told the two early-20s state guards, “I’m sorry, I don’t want to see you anymore.”
The Chinese employee, who asked to remain anonymous, said there are more than 200 foreign media workers in Beijing, and the circle is small. She knows Cheng Lei and Fan Ruo Yi, who were arrested earlier in the day. While the chain of events has shaken the small circle, it has also left everyone in fear.
“You don’t know when your turn will come, let’s say you’ve done a story on Xinjiang, you’ve been involved in a story on Hong Kong, it’s definitely a sensitive topic in the eyes of the government, it’s a thorn in the side, you’re easy for them to catch,” she said.
The Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, two of the world’s leading journalists’ organizations, say that in the coming year 2020, the global incarceration of journalists is at an all-time high, with the Chinese Communist Party ranking first in the world in this regard.
“Cedric Alviani, executive director of RSF’s East Asia office, said the foreign media is now the only remaining witness to the Chinese Communist regime, and as such is a thorn in the side of the Communist Party, which needs only positive propaganda, and wants to get rid of it before it is too late.
“The Chinese regime holds foreign media interviewees and employees hostage. They try to coerce foreign media reporters by saying that if I am not satisfied with what you publish, I will punish your Chinese employees or interviewees. This, of course, has a chilling effect on foreign media reporters,” he told Voice of America in an earlier interview.
Back in Sydney, Bottus often misses his colleagues in Beijing, the neighbors who chill in the elevator and the old lady in the neighborhood who gets a $20 haircut. She was friendly, he said, even though she always treated him like an American and told him, “You guys are so messed up in America right now. It’s scary, the epidemic, the discrimination against black people.
“Maybe in some ways we have different perceptions, but this is a small thing,” Bottus said. In his view, Beijing is increasingly seeking news coverage that is in step with the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda. The departure of foreign media reporters in China will only make understanding and communication between China and the rest of the world’s population even less.
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