Foreign Journalists in China Subject to Increasing Intimidation: Survey | China

The Chinese government is finding new ways to intimidate foreign journalists, their Chinese colleagues and their sources, and the harassment has reached such a high level that at least six have left the country, according to a key report.

The methods include online trolling, physical assaults, hacking, and visa denials, as well as what appears to be official encouragement of lawsuits or threats of legal action against journalists, “usually filed by sources long after they have explicitly agreed to be interviewed”.

The report, compiled by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC), said: “The FCCC highlights this development with alarm, as foreigners involved in civil or criminal trials and court proceedings in China may be prohibited from leaving the country. , based on past precedent.”

Under Xi Jinping, China has become increasingly authoritarian, with a worsening crackdown on press freedom and harassment of foreign media and their staff. Cheng Lei, an Australian journalist with the state broadcaster China Global Television Network, and mist fan, a Chinese journalist for Bloomberg, remain in jail after more than a year.

In the report, released Monday, the FCCC compiled the results of its annual member survey. It found high rates of reported incidents of harassment and intimidation, and said the increased dangers had prompted many foreign journalists and media to develop emergency exit plans.

Former BBC correspondent John Sudworth was forced to leave China with his wife, Yvonne Murray, who is a foreign correspondent for RTÉ, and their children after significant harassment, intimidation, and threats of legal action over their reporting of research.

“When we made our hasty exit, the plainclothes policemen who followed us and our young children to the airport were the final proof of the dangers we face and of China’s deep intolerance towards independent journalism,” he said.

The FCCC said at least eight other foreign correspondents had been threatened with legal action or sued by government entities or sources, “less[ing] of their time denouncing and immersing them in great personal risk.”

The FCCC found that 62% of respondents reported being obstructed at least once by police or other officials, and 47% by unidentified persons. It said that 12% were “mistreated or subjected to other forms of physical force” while reporting.

During the floods in Henan province last summer, several Western journalists were physically confronted by people angry at their attempts to report on the disaster and investigate official cover-ups that were later confirmed by China’s central government.

Nearly a quarter of those surveyed said they were targeted for their reporting in online smear campaigns, with trolling disproportionately directed at female journalists of East Asian descent and Chinese employees of foreign media, including sexual innuendos and “alarming threats of physical violence.” “.

“After a state-linked blog posted numerous complaints criticizing my reporting half a year ago as ‘illegal,’ hundreds of Chinese social media accounts began posting my photo along with comments like ‘beat her to death’ and depicting sexual acts. “, He said. National Public Radio correspondent Emily Feng.

The attacks were sometimes directly encouraged or instigated by the state or state-backed entities, according to the report, while government officials and ambassadors regularly wrote public diatribes against Western reporters.

The FCCC said the attacks demonstrated an “emboldened Chinese government willing to go to great lengths to discredit foreign journalists and their work.” However, he noted that “none of this has stopped foreign journalists from doing their jobs, or major global news organizations from going after the stories that matter.”

Many outlets have had to find ways to report from outside China, with dozens of journalists still barred after their expulsion in 2020 and 2021, which was the “biggest blow to international reporting in China,” said Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times. expelled the head of the Beijing office, which is now based in Seoul.

Jonathan Cheng, the Wall Street Journal’s Beijing bureau chief, said: “It’s tested our ingenuity, and there are some things we just can’t do from afar, many of them related to getting our readers outside. [of] The largest cities in China.

Reporters from China are now in Taipei, Singapore, Sydney and London, covering the country remotely or awaiting visa approval. Late last year, China and the US agreed to ease visa restrictions on journalists from each other’s countries, but few have been prosecuted. In the FCCC survey, 46% of respondents said their offices in China were understaffed because they hadn’t been able to bring in enough journalists.

The survey also found that Chinese authorities and officials were still using Covid-19 measures and border restrictions to delay visa approvals, clamp down on reporting travel, deny access to some locations, and refuse interview requests. More than half of those surveyed said they had been told to leave a venue or denied access for health and safety reasons even though they posed no risk. Hong Kong’s strict border regulations also increased pressure on foreign journalists already reporting increased hardship under the national security law and crackdown on the press.