BEIJING — The latest transfer by U.S. President Donald Trump to make cuts at Voice of America and different U.S. government-run media could also be welcome information for China’s ruling Communist Celebration.
A Chinese language Overseas Ministry spokesperson shunned commenting on Trump’s decision Tuesday however took the chance to criticize the shops.
“I don’t touch upon U.S. home coverage adjustments,” Mao Ning mentioned when requested about it. “However as for the media you talked about, their unhealthy information in reporting on China will not be a secret.”
The Trump’s administration put nearly your complete employees of Voice of America on go away final weekend and ended grants to Radio Free Asia and different media with related information programming.
Radio Free Asia has an in depth Chinese language-language service and often studies on human rights points, together with the detention of activists and repression of ethnic teams in Xinjiang and Tibet. The federal government refutes allegations of abuse.
Voice of America, also referred to as VOA, has a Chinese language-language web site that always publishes tales not lined by Chinese language media, which is state-controlled. China ranks 172 out of 180 within the Reporters With out Borders press freedom index.
The World Occasions, a state-owned tabloid, criticized Voice of America at size in an editorial this week.
“The so-called beacon of freedom, VOA, has now been discarded by its personal authorities like a grimy rag,” it mentioned.
Past China, Cambodia’s former Prime Minister Hun Sen, who dominated his nation for close to 4 a long time as an autocrat, welcomed Trump’s transfer.
“This can be a main contribution to eliminating faux information, disinformation, lies, distortions, incitement, and chaos all over the world coming from the propaganda machine that President Trump has stopped funding,” he mentioned Monday in a written assertion.
Clayton Weimers, USA govt director of the press advocacy group Reporters With out Borders, mentioned that authoritarian regimes are “the most important winners” from Trump’s gutting of the U.S. Company for World Media.
“Lots of them, like China, are wanting ahead to filling the hole left by American management in media freedom with their very own propaganda,” Weimers mentioned.
In Washington, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the highest Democrat on the Home Choose Committee on the Strategic Competitors with the Chinse Communist Celebration, mentioned the strikes towards VOA and different broadcasters would “severely weaken our skill to compete” with China’s ruling occasion and “in the end make us much less protected.”
The media shops “present actual reporting to thousands and thousands dwelling underneath authoritarian regimes, countering CCP distortion,” and permitting Chinese language folks to “query the CCP’s propaganda and aggression towards the U.S. and our allies and companions,” Krishnamoorthi mentioned.
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Wu reported from Bangkok. Related Press author Nicholas Riccardi in Denver and Didi Tang in Washington contributed to this report
