China to expel American reporters after U.S. curbs its media
BEIJING • China announced that it will revoke the media credentials of all American journalists at three major U.S. news organizations, in effect expelling them from the country, in response to new U.S. restrictions on Chinese state-controlled media.
The foreign ministry said early Wednesday that American citizens working for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post with credentials expiring before the end of the year must surrender their press cards within 10 days.
It is the latest in a series of tit-for-tat actions by the two governments as the Trump administration takes a more confrontational stance in dealing with China than his predecessors. The two countries remained enmeshed in a trade war despite a recent truce and have traded angry words over the coronavirus pandemic that emerged in China and has spread worldwide.
The move comes after the Trump administration designated five Chinese media outlets as foreign missions and restricted the number of Chinese who could work for them in a de facto expulsion of about one-third of their Chinese staff.
China described its steps as “necessary and reciprocal countermeasures that China is compelled to take in response to the oppression the Chinese media organizations experience in the U.S.”
The American journalists will likely have to leave China because their visas are tied to their press credentials. They won’t be allowed to work in not only mainland China but also the semiautonomous territories of Hong Kong and Macao, the foreign ministry said in a release on its website.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo disputed the comparison between the U.S. and Chinese actions. “The individuals that we identified a few weeks back were not media that were acting here freely,” he said.
“They were part of Chinese propaganda outlets.”
FILE — In this Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2020 file photo, a member of an honor guard wears a face mask as he stands guard in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. On Wednesday, March 17, 2020, China announced that it will revoke the media credentials of American journalists at three major U.S. news organizations, in effect expelling them from the country, in response to new U.S. restrictions on Chinese state-controlled media. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)