China’s expulsion of American journalists is outrageous

OPINION:

Beijing’s just-announced decision to immediately expel American reporters from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post is utterly unjustified and a major outrage. It will further hamper Americans’ understanding of China (which, you may noticed from the COVID-19 outbreak, is rather an important subject). And it will also upend the lives of many American reporters — some of whom friends of mine — who have made their homes in China for more than two decades.

The written announcement justifying the decision, meanwhile, is a masterpiece of duplicity.

The Chinese foreign ministry, which announced the decision, cites the U.S. State Department’s recent declaration that five Chinese “news” organizations operating in the United States are “foreign missions” and would be regulated as such. This declaration was correct. Those five organizations — Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International, China Daily Distribution Corporation, and Hai Tian Development USA – are each either Communist Party- or state-owned enterprises whose mission is to propagandize on behalf of the Chinese Community Party and the regime in Beijing. They are not news organizations.

But the Chinese foreign ministry now calls the State Department’s actions “discriminatory restrictions” and has promised “reciprocal action,” in the form of kicking out all American reporters from those three major newspapers. In reality, of course, there is no equivalence between, for instance, state-owned Xinhua News and the Times, Post, and Journal. Xinhua exists to promote the regime in Beijing; the Times, Post, and Journal are wholly independent news providers. (And, in contrast to Xinhua, you may have noticed that the New York Times is a wee bit hostile to the government of its home country.)

The Chinese foreign ministry further states that its “fundamental state policy of opening-up has not changed and will not change,” a hilarious declaration to make when you are kicking out foreign reporters. And it also says that “what we reject is ideological bias against China, fake news made in the name of press freedom, and breaches of ethics in journalism,” while citing precisely zero instances of ideological bias, fake news, or ethical breaches in journalism.

By the way, there’s a chilling subplot to the Chinese decision. The expulsion applies not only to reporters in mainland China, but also to those working in Hong Kong and Macau.

In 1997, when Hong Kong was absorbed into China, Beijing promised that for fifty years it would maintain a policy of “one country, two systems.” The idea was that even as Mainland China remained an authoritarian state, Hong Kong would retain its free and open political system and economy. The expulsion of U.S. journalists working in Hong Kong is further proof that that promise has been broken — that “one country, two systems” is now so much fake news.

• Ethan Epstein is editorial editor of The Washington Times. Contact him at eepstein@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter @ethanepstiiiine.