Action against US media ‘self-defense’; more to follow

China on Wednesday announced that the China-based branches of Associated Press, UPI, CBS and NPR must declare in written form the information about their staff, finances, operations and properties in China within 7 days, in a move which analysts said is an equal countermeasure against the baseless US crackdown on Chinese media, and more measures against these US media outlets may follow.

The announcement was made by Zhao Lijian, spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The countermeasures China was forced to take in response to the upgraded discrimination and restrictions on Chinese media in the US are purely self-defense, said Zhao.

This is an equal countermeasure after the US launched sanctions on Chinese media outlets in the US, said Zhang Tengjun, an assistant research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, warning that more measures, like visa restrictions and expulsion of journalists from those agencies may follow if the US does not stop its baseless crackdown on Chinese media.

The US needs to calm down and stop picking small fights with China, as the friction will mount and diminish mutual trust between the two countries, Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times.

China won’t proactively pick fights, nor will it add fuel to the fire of frictions, but it will definitely take countermeasures if provoked by the US, he said.

Zhang said that China’s measure partly targets some US media, because those media have rancorously voiced unchecked stories about China’s passing of the national security law for Hong Kong, Xinjiang-related and other issues.

Instead of serving as a bridge between people in the two countries, those media outlets have spared no efforts to smear China, so restrictions on them are justified, Zhang told the Global Times.

“More measures, such as visa restrictions and expulsion of journalists from those agencies may follow if the US does not stop its baseless crackdown on Chinese media.”

Zhang Tengjun assistant research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies