Foreign correspondents denounce the "considerable deterioration" of press freedom in China

Eighteen foreign journalists expelled.

Increased pressure against Chinese sources and reporters employed by their media.

More restrictions with the argument of the covid pandemic.

The situation of foreign media in China has suffered a “considerable deterioration” in 2020, according to the Foreign Correspondents Club in China (FCCC) in its annual report.

"For the third year in a row, not a single correspondent has declared that the conditions to carry out their work have improved," says the report

Locate, Track and Expel: Report in China in the midst of a pandemic

,

which is based on the responses of about 150 of the about 220 correspondents that make up the association, which the Chinese government does not recognize.

Over the past year, "all the weapons of state power - including surveillance systems established to fight the coronavirus - were used to harass and intimidate journalists, their Chinese colleagues and those they sought out to interview," secure the document.

In 2020, China expelled at least 18 foreign correspondents, from the US newspapers

The New York Times

,

The Washington Post

and

The Wall Street Journal

, as a measure of retaliation after the US government, then headed by President Donald Trump, ordered the departure from their country of several dozen Chinese journalists.

In September, two Australian reporters left China after being questioned by officials from the Ministry of State Security, leaving their country without correspondents in the Asian giant.

This is the "largest expulsion of foreign reporters since the Tiananmen massacre, more than 30 years ago," says the FCCC.

The use of visas as a pressure tactic towards reporters considered "unruly", which had already begun in previous years, has been accentuated.

A quarter of permanent correspondents state that they have received residence permits valid for less than one year, the standard duration.

One in six only obtain visas lasting between one and three months, less than some tourist visas.

Pressure on foreign media is also extending against its workers of Chinese nationality.

Although Chinese citizens cannot legally work as journalists in foreign media, where they can only perform auxiliary functions, they are routinely questioned by state security or by the Police on work trips or in their home towns, they are accused of betraying their homeland and are insulted on social media.

59% of foreign journalists report having evidence of pressure on their Chinese colleagues throughout 2020, compared to 44% who denounced them a year earlier.

In the most extreme case, a journalist for the Bloomberg news agency, Haze Fan, was arrested in December on suspicion of "endangering national security."

The coronavirus pandemic has drastically worsened conditions for carrying out journalistic work that were already gradually deteriorating in recent years.

The fight against the disease has been used as an additional way to control reporters, the club denounces.

New surveillance systems and movement controls imposed this year in China for public health reasons have also been used to impose limits on reporters.

42% declare having been forced to leave some place, or having seen how access was prevented, for supposed health or safety reasons, when it was demonstrable that they did not constitute any risk.

In many cases they were forced to leave somewhere because, failing to do so, the local authorities threatened to impose a 14-day quarantine on them.

In other cases, they have been forced to undergo multiple coronavirus tests, some only minutes apart.

Border closure

21% of correspondents were prevented from returning to China after Beijing announced the closure of its borders at the end of March last year, and a year later “journalists remain the only group of residence permit holders to those who are prevented from entering China ”.

Surveillance is "especially intense" in Xinjiang, home to the Uighur Muslim minority, denounces the FCCC.

Although the region is open, in some areas the local authorities prevented journalists from accessing it under the argument of controlling the pandemic in areas that other people, Chinese and foreigners, could visit.

Pressure was also applied to the sources of the correspondents.

88% saw interview requests rejected on the grounds that the people they wanted to speak to were not authorized to speak to foreign press.

A year earlier, that percentage was 76%.

Half of the correspondents believe, or are aware, that some previously agreed interview was canceled due to pressure from the authorities to whom it should be granted.

Almost 40%, compared to 25% in 2019, were aware of cases in which sources were harassed, detained, summoned to testify or questioned as a result of having interacted with a foreign journalist.

"Despite what China says about wanting to be open to the world and to show everyone what a vibrant society it is, they clearly restrict reporting on anything that does not correspond to their point of view," states Steven Lee Myers in the report, delegate of

The New York Times

in Beijing and one of the journalists expelled in March last year from the country.

"It is suggestive of a climate that is not going to improve."

China expels three journalists from 'the Wall Street Journal' in retaliation for racist headline column

In the daily press conference offered by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the spokesman for this department, Wang Wenbin, has rejected the accusations contained in the report, which he described as "presumptuous, alarmist and without any basis in the facts."

“We always welcome the media and journalists from all countries to cover information about China according to the law.

What we oppose is the ideological bias against China, and hoaxes in the name of freedom of the press, "he added.