Amid media war, China slams Washington’s ‘ideological bias’

China says it is ‘strongly dissatisfied’ with a series of strict restrictions and new visa terms recently imposed by Washington on Chinese journalists in the United States, pledging to take countermeasures.

During a daily briefing in Beijing on Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian urged the White House to right the wrong in no time.

“We are resolutely opposed and strongly dissatisfied with this,” the spokesman said, adding, “We require the US to immediately correct its mistake, or China will have no choice but to take countermeasures.”

“For a period of time, the US has stuck to a Cold War mentality and ideological bias, and it has continuously escalated its suppression of Chinese media,” Zhao said.

The Foreign Ministry official added that the Americans are now “using visas to take discriminatory limitations, severely disrupting the Chinese media's ability to report normally in the US, severely disrupting people-to-people relations between our two countries.”

Last week, the United States issued a new rule limiting visas for Chinese reporters to a 90-day period. The US Department of Homeland Security said it was in response to the treatment of American journalists in China.

In recent months, the United States and China have been engaged in a series of retaliatory actions involving journalists.

In March, China revoked the visas of three Wall Street Journal reporters in Beijing after the newspaper declined to apologize for a column with a headline calling China the ‘Real Sick Man of Asia,’ which referred to the coronavirus outbreak.

Beijing called the headline “racially-laced and discriminatory.”

The administration of President Donald Trump of the United States said it may expel Chinese journalists in retaliation.

Washington announced that the number of Chinese nationals permitted to work for five Chinese media outlets in the US — including Xinhua News Agency — would be limited to 100 as of March 13, down from the current 160.

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Zhao at the time said the restrictions effectively meant the expulsion of Chinese journalists. The move exposes “the hypocrisy of the United States’ so-called freedom of the press as blatant double standard and hegemonic bullying.”

“It was the US who broke the rules of the game first, China can only follow suit,” Zhao said on March 2.

Another Chinese Foreign Ministry official, Hua Chunying, used a more strident language, writing on Twitter, “Now the US has kicked off the game, let’s play.”

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists also voiced dismay at the US media crackdown, saying Washington was furthering a “dangerous cycle of tit-for-tat retaliation” that could impede the flow of information in the midst of the coronavirus crisis.

China’s Ambassador to the United Nations Zhang Jun said, “We do not think it's appropriate for the United States to take steps to interfere with the work of journalists coming from China.”

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