China’s journalism lockdown

Earlier this year, the Trump administration took a small step toward balancing a gross asymmetry in U.S.-Chinese relations: While Chinese news organizations, including state-run bodies that serve as fronts for intelligence agencies, freely deployed hundreds of purported journalists and family members in the United States, China allowed a much smaller contingent of U.S. reporters, and they were experiencing mounting harassment. The State Department designated five Chinese news outlets as official government entities—which they are—and subjected them to reporting requirements applied to diplomats.

That has touched off a tit-for-tat press war that the regime of Xi Jinping has used to further curtail independent reporting from China, even as the world battles the covid-19 pandemic that originated there.

China claims to be responding reciprocally to U.S. actions. In fact, the measures of the two governments, as well as the people affected, bear little similarity to one another. Beijing’s initial answer to the U.S. requirement was to expel three Wall Street Journal reporters, one of whom had been reporting from Hubei province, where the novel coronavirus now sweeping the world originated.

That was in keeping with what has been a growing practice of canceling or limiting the visas of foreign journalists whose coverage the regime objects to.

China could respond by accrediting more American journalists and getting an expansion of its U.S. bureaus in return. Instead, it has chosen to further restrict independent reporting on the country at a time when much of the world is wondering whether it can believe Beijing’s accounts of the covid-19 epidemic. As it happens, The Post on Tuesday published a vivid and balanced account of the recent lockdown imposed on Beijing, which we described as effective in stemming the epidemic. It’s hard to see how Xi’s regime can benefit from further suppression of such fair and credible reporting.